LECTURE I
ARNHEIM, 17th July, 1924.
Dr. Steiner began his lecture by thanking Dr. Zeylmans
van Emmichoven and those who arranged the course.
For
quite a number of years now Education has been one of those
branches of civilised, cultural activity which we foster within
the Anthroposophical Movement, and, as will appear from these
lectures, we may perhaps just in this sphere look back with a
certain satisfaction on what we have been able to do. Our
schools have existed only a few years, so I cannot speak of an
achievement, but only of the beginning of something
which, even outside the Anthroposophical Movement, has already
made a certain impression on circles interested in the
spiritual life of the cultural world of today. Looking back on
our educational activity it gives me real joy, particularly
here in Holland, where many years ago I had the opportunity of
lecturing on subjects connected with anthroposophical
spiritual science, to speak once more on this closely
related theme.
Anthroposophical education and teaching is based on that
knowledge of man which is only to be gained on the basis of
spiritual science; it works out of a knowledge of the whole
human being, body, soul and spirit. At first such a statement
may be regarded as obvious. It will be said that of course the
whole man must be taken into consideration when it is a
question of educational practice, of education as an art; that
neither should the spiritual be neglected in favour of the
physical, nor the physical in favour of the spiritual. But it
will very soon be seen how the matter stands when we become
aware of the practical results which ensue when any branch of
human activity is based on anthroposophical spiritual science.
Here in Holland, in the Hague, a small school has been founded
on the basis of an anthroposophical knowledge of man, a
daughter school, if I may call it so, of our Waldorf School in
Stuttgart. And I believe that whoever gets to know such a
school, whether from merely hearing about the way it is run, or
through a more intimate knowledge, will find in the actual way
it deals with teaching and education, something arising from
its anthroposophical foundation which differs essentially from
the usual run of schools in our present civilisation. The
reason for this is that wherever we look today we find a gulf
between what people think, or devise theoretically, and what
they actually carry out in practice. For in our present
civilisation theory and practice have become two widely
separated spheres. However paradoxical it may sound, the
separation may be observed, perhaps most of all in the most
practical of all occupations in life, in the business world, in
the economic sphere. Here all sorts of things are learnt
theoretically. For instance, people think out details of
administration in economic affairs. They form intentions.
But these intentions cannot be carried out in actual practice.
However carefully they are thought out, they do not meet the
actual conditions of life. I should like to express myself
still more clearly, so that we may understand one another. For
example, a man who wishes to set up a business concern thinks
out some sort of business project. He thinks over all that is
connected with this business and organises it according to his
intentions.
His
theories and abstract thoughts are then put into effect, but,
when actually carried out, they everywhere come up against
reality. Certainly things are done, thought-out ideas are even
put into practice, but these thoughts do not fit into real
life. In actual fact something is carried over into real life
which does not correspond with what is real. Now a business
that is conducted in this way can continue for some time and
its inaugurator will consider himself to be a tremendously
practical fellow. For whoever goes into business and from the
outset has learnt absolutely nothing outside customary practice
will consider himself a “practical” man.
Today we can hear how really practical people speak about such
a theorist. He enters into business life and with a heavy hand
introduces his thought-out ideas. If sufficient capital is
available, he may even be able to carry on for a time, after a
while, however, the concern collapses, or it may be absorbed
into some more established business. Usually when this
happens very little heed is paid to how much genuine,
vital effort has been wasted, how many lives ruined, how many
people injured or impaired in their way of life. It has come
about solely because something has been thought out —
thought out by a so-called “practical” man. In such
a case however the person in question is not practical through
his insight but by the use of his elbows. He has introduced
something into reality without considering the conditions of
reality.
Few
people notice it, but this kind of thing has become rampant in
the cultural life of today. At the present time the only sphere
where such things are understood, where it is recognised that
such a procedure does not work, is in the application of
mechanical natural science to life. When the decision is made
to build a bridge it is essential to make use of a knowledge of
mechanics to ensure that the bridge will stand up to what is
required of it; otherwise the first train that passes over it
will be plunged into the water. Such things have already
happened, and even at the present time we have seen the results
of faulty mechanical construction. Speaking generally,
however, this sphere is the only one in practical life in which
it can be stated unequivocally that the conditions of reality
have or have not been foreseen.
If
we take the sphere of medicine we shall see at once that it is
not so evident whether or not the conditions of reality have
been taken into account. Here too the procedure is the same;
something is thought out theoretically and then applied as a
means of healing. Whether in this case there has been a cure,
whether it was somebody's destiny to die, or whether perhaps he
has been “cured to death,” this indeed is difficult
to perceive. The bridge collapses when there are faults in its
construction; but whether the sick person gets worse, whether
he has been cured by the treatment, or has died of it, is not
so easy to discover.
In
the same way, in the sphere of education it is not always
possible to see whether the growing child is being educated in
accordance with his needs, or whether fanciful methods are
being used which can certainly be worked out by experimental
psychology. In this latter case the child is examined by
external means and the following questions arise: what sort of
memory has he, what are his intellectual capacities, his
ability to form judgments and so on? Educational aims are
frequently found in this way. But how are they carried into
life? They sit firmly in the head, that is where they are. In
his head the teacher knows that a child must be taught
arithmetic like this, geography like that, and so it goes on.
Now the intentions are to be put into practice. The teacher
considers all he has learnt, and remembers that according to
the precepts of scientific educational method he must set about
things in such and such a way. He is now faced with putting his
knowledge into practice, he remembers these theoretical
principles and applies them quite externally. Whoever has the
gift for observing such things can experience how
sometimes teachers who have thoroughly mastered educational
theories, who can recount admirably everything they had to know
for their examination, or had to learn in practice
class-teaching, nevertheless remain utterly removed from
life when they come face to face with the children they have to
teach. What has happened to such a teacher is what, daily and
hourly, we are forced to observe with sorrowing heart, the fact
that people pass one another by in life, that they have no
sense for getting to know one another. This is a common state
of affairs. It is the fundamental evil which underlies all
social disturbances which are so widespread in the cultural
life of today: the lack of paying heed to others, the lack of
interest which every man should have for others. In everyday
civilised life we must perforce accept such a state of affairs;
it is the destiny of modern humanity at the present time. But
the peak of such aloofness is reached when the teacher of the
child or the educator of the youth stands at a distance from
his pupil, quite separated from him, and employs in a
completely external way methods obtained by external
science. We can see that the laws of mechanics have been
wrongly applied when a bridge collapses, but wrong educational
methods are not so obvious. A clear proof of the fact that
human beings today are only at home when it comes to a
mechanical way of thinking, which can always determine whether
things have been rightly or wrongly thought out, and which has
produced the most brilliant triumphs in the life of modern
civilisation — a proof of this is that humanity today has
confidence only in mechanical thought. And if this mechanical
thinking is carried into education, if, for instance, the
child is asked to write down disconnected words and then repeat
them quickly, so that a record can be made of his power of
assimilation, if this is the procedure in education it is a
sign that there is no longer any natural gift for approaching
the child himself. We experiment with the child because we can
no longer approach his heart and soul.
In
saying all this it might seem as though one had the inclination
or desire only to criticise and reprove in a superior sort of
way. It is of course always easier to criticise than to build
something up constructively. But as a matter of fact what I
have said does not arise out of any such inclination or desire;
it arises out of a direct observation of life. This direct
observation of life must proceed from something which is
usually completely excluded from knowledge today. What sort of
person must one be today if one wishes to pursue some calling
based on knowledge — for instance on the knowledge of
man? One must be objective! This is to be heard all over the
place today, in every hole and corner. Of course one must be
objective, but the question is whether or not this objectivity
is based on a lack of paying due heed to what is essential in
any particular situation.
Now
for the most part people have the idea that love is far more
subjective than anything else in life, and that it would be
utterly impossible for anyone who loves to be objective. For
this reason when knowledge is spoken about today love is never
mentioned seriously. True, it is deemed fitting, when a young
man is applying himself to acquire knowledge, to exhort him to
do so with love, but this mostly happens when the whole way in
which knowledge is presented is not at all likely to develop
love in anybody But the essence of love, the giving of oneself
to the world and its phenomena, is in any case not regarded as
knowledge. Nevertheless for real life love is the greatest
power of knowledge. And without this love it is utterly
impossible to attain to a knowledge of man which could form the
basis of a true art of education. Let us try to picture this
love, and see how it can work in the special sphere of an
education founded on a knowledge of man drawn from spiritual
science, from anthroposophy.
The
child is entrusted to us to be educated, to be taught. If our
thinking in regard to education is founded on anthroposophy we
do not represent the child to ourselves as something we must
help to develop so that he approaches nearer and nearer to some
social human ideal, or whatever it may be. For this human ideal
can be completely abstract. And today such a human ideal has
already become something which can assume as many forms as
there are political, social and other parties. Human ideals
change according to whether one swears by liberalism,
conservatism, or by some other programme, and so the child is
led slowly in some particular direction in order to become what
is held to be right for mankind. This is carried to extreme
lengths in present-day Russia. Generally speaking, however, it
is more or less how people think today, though perhaps somewhat
less radically.
This is no starting point for the teacher who wants to educate
and teach on the basis of anthroposophy. He does not make an
“idol” of his opinions. For an abstract picture of
man, towards which the child shall be led, is an idol, it is in
no sense a reality. The only reality which could exist in this
field would be at most if the teacher were to consider himself
as an ideal and were to say that every child must become like
him. Then one would at least have touched on some sort of
reality, but the absurdity of saying such a thing would at once
be obvious.
What we really have before us in this young child is a being
who has not yet begun his physical existence, but has brought
down his spirit and soul from pre-earthly worlds, and has
plunged into a physical body bestowed on him by parents and
ancestors. We look upon this child as he lies there before us
in the first days of his life with indeterminate features and
with unorganised, undirected movements. We follow day by day,
week by week how the features grow more and more defined, and
become the expression of what is working to the surface from
the inner life of soul. We observe further how the whole life
and movements of the child become more consequent and
directed, how something of the nature of spirit and soul is
working its way to the surface from the inmost depths of his
being. Then, filled with holy awe and reverence, we ask:
“What is it that is here working its way to the
surface?” And so with heart and mind we are led back to
the human being himself, when as soul and spirit he dwelt in
the soul-spiritual pre-earthly world from which he has
descended into the physical world, and we say: “Little
child, now that you have entered through birth into earthly
existence you are among human beings, but previously you were
among spiritual, divine beings.” What once lived
among spiritual-divine beings has descended in order to live
among men. We see the divine made manifest in the child. We
feel as though standing before an altar. There is however one
difference. In religious communities it is customary for human
beings to bring their sacrificial offerings to the altars, so
that these offerings may ascend into the spiritual world; now
we feel ourselves standing as it were before an altar turned
the other way; now the gods allow their grace to stream down in
the form of divine-spiritual beings, so that these beings,
acting as messengers of the gods, may unfold what is
essentially human on the altar of physical life. We behold in
every child the unfolding of cosmic laws of a divine-spiritual
nature; we see how God creates in the world. In its highest,
most significant form this is revealed in the child. Hence
every single child becomes for us a sacred riddle, for every
single child embodies this great question — not, how is
he to be educated so that he approaches some “idol”
which has been thought out. — But, how shall we foster
what the gods have sent down to us into the earthly world. We
learn to know ourselves as helpers of the divine-spiritual
world, and above all we learn to ask: What may be the result if
we approach education with this attitude of mind?
Education in the true sense proceeds out of just such an
attitude. What matters is that we should develop our
education and teaching on the basis of such thoughts as
these. Knowledge of man can only be won if love for mankind
— in this case love for the child — becomes the
mainspring of our work. If this is so, then the teacher's
calling becomes a priestly calling, for then the educator
becomes the steward of what it is the will of the gods to carry
out with man.
Here again it might appear as though something obvious is being
said in rather different words. But it is not so. As a matter
of fact in today's unsocial world-order, which only wears an
outer semblance of being social, the very opposite occurs.
Educationists pursue an “idol” for mankind, not
seeing themselves as nurturers of something they must first
learn to know when actually face to face with the child.
An
attitude of mind such as I have described cannot work in an
abstract way, it must work spiritually, while always keeping
the practical in view. Such an attitude however can never be
acquired by accepting theories quite unrelated and alien to
life, it can only be gained if one has a feeling, a sense for
every expression of life, and can enter with love into all its
manifestations.
Today there is a great deal of talk about educational reform.
Since the war there has been talk of a revolution in education.
We have experienced this. Every possible approach to a new
education is thought out, and pretty well everybody is
concerned in some way or other with how this reform is to be
brought about. Either one approaches some institution about to
be founded with one's proposals or at the very least one
suggests this or that as one's idea of how education should
take shape. And so it goes on. There is a great deal of talk
about methods of education; but do you see what kind of
impression all this makes when one surveys, quite without
prejudice, what the various societies for the reform of
education, down to the most radical, put forward today in
their educational programmes? I do not know whether many people
take into account what kind of impression is made when one is
faced with so many programmes issuing from associations and
societies for educational reform. One gets the impression: Good
heavens, how clever people are today! For indeed everything
which comes about like this is frightfully clever. I do not
mean this ironically, but quite seriously. There has never been
a time when there was so much cleverness as there is in our era.
There we have it, all set out. Paragraph 1.
How shall we educate so that the forces of the
child may be developed naturally? Paragraph 2 ...
Paragraph 3 ... and so on. People today of any
profession or occupation, and of any social class can sit down
together and work out such programmes; everything we get
in this way in paragraphs 1 to 30 will be delightfully clever,
for today one knows just how to formulate everything
theoretically. People have never been so skilful in formulating
things as they are today. Then such a programme, a number of
programmes can be submitted to a committee or to Parliament.
This again is very clever. Now something may perhaps be deleted
or added according to party opinion, and something extremely
clever emerges, even if at times strongly coloured by
“party.” Nothing can be done with it, however, for
all this is quite beside the point.
Waldorf School education never started off with such a
programme. I have no wish to boast, but naturally, had this
been our purpose, we could also have produced some kind of
programme no less clever than those of many an association for
educational reform. The fact that we should have to reckon with
reality might perhaps prove a hindrance and then the result
would be more stupid. With us however there was never any
question of a programme. From the outset we were never
interested in principles of educational method which might
later on be somehow incorporated in a legalised educational
system. What did interest us was reality, absolute true
reality. What was this reality? To begin with here were
children, a number of child-individualities with varying
characteristics. One had to learn what these were, one had to
get to know what was inherent in these children, what they had
brought down with them, what was expressed through their
physical bodies. First and foremost then there were the
children. And then there were teachers. You can stand up as
strongly as you like for the principle that the child must be
educated in accordance with his individuality — that
stands in all the programmes of reform — but nothing
whatever will come of it. For on the other hand, besides the
children, there are a number of teachers, and the point is to
know what these teachers can accomplish in relation to these
children. The school must be run in such a way that one does
not set up an abstract ideal, but allows the school to develop
out of the teachers and out of the pupils. And these teachers
and pupils are not present in an abstract kind of way, but are
quite concrete, individual human beings. That is the gist of
the matter. Then we are led by virtue of necessity to build up
a true education based on a real knowledge of man. We cease to
be theoretical and become practical in every detail.
Waldorf School education, the first manifestation of an
education based on anthroposophy, is actually the practice of
education as an art, and is therefore able to give only
indications of what can be done in this or that case. We have
no great interest in general theories, but so much the greater
is our interest in impulses coming from anthroposophy which can
give us a true knowledge of man, beginning, as here of course
it must do, with the child. But today our crude observation
completely ignores what is most characteristic in the
progressive stages of life. I would say that some measure
of inspiration must be drawn from spiritual science if today we
are to develop a right sense for what should be brought to the
child.
At
the present time people know extraordinarily little about man
and mankind. They imagine that our present state of existence
is the same as it was in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, and
indeed as it has always been. They picture the ancient Greeks
and the ancient Egyptians as being very similar to the man of
today. And if we go back still further, according to the views
of present-day natural science, history becomes enveloped in
mist until those beings emerge which are half ape, half man. No
interest is taken, however, in penetrating into the great
differences which exist between the historical and
pre-historical epochs of mankind.
Let
us study the human being as he appears to us today, beginning
with the child up to the change of teeth. We see quite clearly
that his physical development runs parallel with his
development of soul and spirit. Everything that manifests as
soul and spirit has its exact counterpart in the physical
— both appear together, both develop out of the child
together. Then, when the child has come through the change of
teeth, we see how the soul is already freeing itself from the
body. On the one side we shall be able to follow a
development of soul and spirit in the child, and on the
other side his physical development. The two sides however are
not as yet clearly separated. If we continue to follow the
development further into the time between puberty and about the
21st year the separation becomes much more defined and then
when we come to the 27th or 28th year — speaking now of
present-day humanity — nothing more can be seen of the
way in which the soul-spiritual is connected with the physical
body. What a man does at this age can be perceived on the one
hand in the soul-spiritual life and on the other hand in the
physical life, but the two cannot be brought into any sort of
connection. At the end of the twenties, man in his soul and
spirit has separated himself completely from what is physical,
and so it goes on up to the end of his life.
Yet
it was not always so. One only believes it to have been so.
Spiritual science, studied anthroposophically, shows us clearly
and distinctly that what we see in the child today, at the
present stage of human evolution — namely, that in his
being of soul and spirit the child is completely dependent on
his physical bodily nature and his physical bodily nature is
completely dependent on his being of soul and spirit —
this condition persisted right on into extreme old age —
a fact that has simply not been noticed. If we go very far back
into those times which gave rise to the conception of the
patriarchs and ask ourselves what kind of a man such a
patriarch really was, the answer must be somewhat as follows:
Such a man, in growing old, changed in respect of his bodily
nature, but right into extreme old age he continued to feel as
only quite young people can feel today. Even in old age he felt
his being of soul and spirit to be dependent on his physical
body.
Today we no longer feel our physical body to be dependent upon
what we think and feel. A dependence of this kind was however
felt in the more ancient epochs of civilisation. But people
also felt after a certain age of life that their bones became
harder and their muscles contained certain foreign substances
which brought about a sclerotic condition. They felt the waning
of their life forces, but they also felt with this physical
decline an increase of spiritual forces, actually brought about
by the breaking up of the physical. “The soul is becoming
free from the physical body.” So they said when this
process of physical decline began. At the age of the
patriarchs, when the body was already breaking up, the soul was
most able to wrest itself free from the body, so that it was no
longer within it. This is why people looked up to the
patriarchs with such devotion and reverence, saying: “O,
how will it be with me one day, when I am so old? For in old
age one can know things, understand things, penetrate into the
heart of things in a way that I cannot do now, because I am
still building up my physical body.” At that time man
could still look into a world order that was both physical and
spiritual. This however was in a very remote past. Then came a
time when man felt this interdependence of the physical and the
soul-spiritual only until about the 50th year. The Greek age
followed. What gives the Greek epoch its special value rests on
the fact that the Greeks were still able to feel the harmony
between the soul-spiritual and the physical-bodily. The Greek
still felt this harmony until the 30th or 40th year. He still
experienced in the circulation of the blood what brought the
soul into a unity with the physical. The wonderful culture and
art of the Greeks was founded on this unity, which transformed
everything theoretical into art, and at the same time
enfilled art with wisdom.
In
those times the sculptor worked in such a way that he needed no
model, for in his own organisation he was aware of the forces
permeating the arm or the leg, giving them their form. This was
learned, for instance, in the festival games; but today when
such games are imitated they have no meaning whatever.
If
however we have such a sense for the development of mankind
then we know what has actually taken place in human evolution.
We know too that today we only have a parallelism between the
physical-bodily and the soul-spiritual until about the 27th or
28th year, to give a quite exact description. (Most people
observe this parallelism only up to the age of puberty.) And so
we know how the divine-spiritual springs up and grows out of
the developing human being. Then we feel the necessary
reverence for our task of developing what comes to meet
us in the child, that is to say, of developing what is
given to us and not developing those abstract ideas that
have been thought out.
Thus our thoughts are directed to a knowledge of man based on
what is individual in the soul. And if we have absorbed such
universal, great historical aspects, we shall also be able to
approach every educational task in an appropriate manner. Then
quite another life will be brought into the class when the
teacher enters it, for he will carry the world into it, the
physical world and the world of soul and spirit. Then he will
be surrounded by an atmosphere of reality, of a real and actual
conception of the world, not one which is merely thought out
and intellectual. Then he will be surrounded by a world imbued
with feeling. Now if we consider what has just been put forward
we shall realise a remarkable fact. We shall see that we are
founding an education which, by degrees, will come to represent
in many respects the very opposite of the characteristic
impulse in education at the present time. All manner of
humorists with some aptitude for caricature often choose the
so-called “schoolmaster” as an object which can
serve their purpose well and on whom they can let loose their
derision. Well, if a schoolmaster is endowed with the necessary
humour he can turn the tables on those who have caricatured him
before the world. But the real point is something altogether
different; for if the teacher, versed in present-day
educational methods, carries these into school with him, and
has therefore no means of learning to know the child, while
nevertheless having to deal with the child, how can he be
anything other than a stranger to the world? With the school
system as it is today, he cannot become anything else; he is
torn right out of the world. So we are faced with a truly
remarkable situation. Teachers who are strangers to the world
are expected to train human beings so that they may get on and
prosper in the world.
Let
us imagine however that the things about which we have been
speaking today become an accepted point of view. Then the
relation of the teacher to the children is such that in each
individual child a whole world is revealed to him, and not only
a human world, but a divine-spiritual world manifested on
earth. In other words the teacher perceives as many aspects of
the world as he has children in his charge. Through every child
he looks into the wide world. His education becomes art. It is
imbued with the consciousness that what is done has a direct
effect on the evolution of the world. Teaching in the sense
meant here leads the teacher, in his task of educating, of
developing human beings, to a lofty conception of the
world. Such a teacher is one who becomes able to play a leading
part in the great questions that face civilisation. The pupil
will never outgrow such a teacher, as is so often the case
today. The following situation may arise in a school. Let us
suppose that the teacher has to educate according to some idea,
some picture of man which he can set before himself. Let us
think that he might have 30 children in his class, and among
these, led by destiny, were two, who in their inborn capacity,
were far more gifted than the teacher himself. What would he
want to do in such a case? He would want to form them in
accordance with his educational ideal; nothing else would be
possible. But how does this work out? Reality does not permit
it, and the pupils then outgrow their teacher.
If
on the other hand we educate in accordance with reality, if we
foster all that manifests in the child as qualities of soul and
spirit, we are in the same situation as the gardener is in
relation to his plants. Do you think that the gardener knows
all these secrets of the plants which he tends? O, these plants
contain many, many more secrets than the gardener
understands; but he can tend them, and perhaps succeed
best in caring for those which he does not yet know. His
knowledge rests on practical experience, he has “green
fingers.” In the same way it is possible for a teacher
who practises an art of education based on reality to stand as
educator before children who have genius, even though he
himself is certainly no genius. For he knows that he has not to
lead his pupils towards some abstract ideal, but that in the
child the Divine is working in man, is working right through
his physical-bodily nature. If the teacher has this attitude of
mind he can actually achieve what has just been said. He
achieves it by an outpouring love which permeates his
work as educator. It is his attitude of mind which is so
essential.
With these words, offered as a kind of greeting, I wanted to
give you today some idea of what is to be the content of this
course of lectures. They will deal with the educational value
of a knowledge of man and the cultural value of education.
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