Lecture Four by Rudolf Steiner given in Berlin, 8 March 1922
“Anthroposophy and Pedagogy.”
My
dear venerated guests! To render the Anthroposophical world
view understandable, it is always accused of having its ideas
and results as based on research by people who first need to be
schooled for it, therefore results of Anthroposophical research
can't be verified from the outset by anyone and that nevertheless
these observations are presented to unprepared people.
Yet
this accusation, however justified it seems, belongs to the
most unjustified ones that can be made against the
Anthroposophical Movement, because it doesn't stipulate that
every single person is to be immediately directed towards
becoming a researcher in a supersensible area, but it deals
with their research results being presented in such a way that
every other individual can prove it for themselves, simply with
ordinary human understanding and ordinary healthy logic. In any
case this doesn't make it unnecessary that at least the first
steps towards supersensible research must be striven for, and
therefore there are indications in various publications which
have been mentioned here already. Everyone can to a certain
degree become an anthroposophical researcher — simply out of
the conditions of present civilisation — but as proof of
results of anthroposophical research this is not necessary
because this proof can simply come through a healthy human
understanding. One of these areas in which results can really
be practically proven, is in the pedagogical area.
Dear friends! The Anthroposophical world view for a long time
had to work purely through people coming continuously closer to
ideas about the supersensible, before it became possible to
bring them into present-day cultural conditions, into practical
life, where they felt themselves particularly ready to actually
penetrate. This was only possible in a limited area — and also
only to a small degree — when Emil Molt founded the Waldorf
School in Stuttgart, whose office was given to me. Already
before that, as shown in the small publication “The
education of the child from the point of view of spiritual
science”, the attempt was undertaken to represent certain
educational principles from the basis of Anthroposophy. Only
through the founding of the Waldorf School did it become
possible to apply these things in practice, and since this time
it is also possible to carry out the pedagogical-didactic side
of Anthroposophy in detail. It will of course not be possible
for me to give more than a few indications in this introductory
lecture, but I think other lectures during these days would be
able to accomplish more.
Whatever is taken up through anthroposophic ideas, when they
are simply verified through healthy human understanding, is not
merely theoretical observation, are no mere ideas of
abstraction which one can have in order to satisfy some or
other need for theoretical knowledge. No, these conveyed ideas
are being created out of an anthroposophical source, this is
real human power; this is something which passes into the whole
person, this makes love more intense, transforms human vigour.
While the ideas and thoughts of usual science, which only draw
on the sense world, have their peculiarity by being in the
service of theoretical interests, and being of the sense-world
its characteristic is to only relate practical interests to the
sense world, by contrast it is characteristic of the ideas from
anthroposophic research that their results work on the entire
human being, on his empowerment, on his — if I might call it so
— life skill, on his understanding of life, and it is this
understanding which enables him to grasp the most varied of
life's opportunities. If one takes on this life and fructify it
through anthroposophical ideas, one can see how the actions of
people, when they allow themselves to be directed by these
ideas, acquire greater power, greater urgency and so on. This
is what must be especially treasured in the pedagogic didactic
sphere.
When we founded the Waldorf School we didn't have the
opportunity to choose the outer conditions for the education
and teaching of our children. In the present it is repeatedly
asserted that for a satisfactory education, satisfactory
teaching to be established, then some or other place for the
school, for the educational institute or its equivalent, must
be chosen. Certainly, much is said about these claims and in
practice they are to some extent successful. We didn't have all
of this. The next thing was the attempt to use the given
circumstances and start with the children in the
Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette factory. Next, we had a very specific
kind of material environment for the children, we had to house
ourselves in a place which was obviously hardly suited — it had
previously been a tavern — to begin our teaching and education.
So we couldn't rely on anything but on what began on a purely
spiritual basis for the pedagogical and didactic aspects
themselves.
Here it must be stressed again: while Anthroposophy doesn't
strive for an abstract head knowledge — if I might use this
expression — but an insight into the world and its secrets, it
involves the whole human being, possibly leading to self-knowledge,
to a self-understanding which one can't achieve in
some or another theoretical sphere. In the end all education,
all teaching is based on the understanding of the human being,
which is proven in the relationship of the teacher, the
educators to the emerging, growing adolescent, to the child.
For this reason, our Waldorf pedagogy is developed upon an
intimate knowledge of the growing person, the child. I only
need to give one detail in which it can be seen how true
insight into the whole human being must prove in practice.
Today we have a psychology which has more or less been proven
by recognized science. However, this psychology theorizes
around many questions which always leave unsatisfactory results.
They pose the following question, for example: what is the
relationship between the soul-spiritual and the physical-bodily
aspects of the human being? They have developed all possible
kinds of theories about this. Here we have three types of
theories. The one tries to come from the soul-spiritual and
try to define this in some way, to formulate an abstract
concept and then to try in how far the soul-spiritual can
work on the bodily-physical. Another, more materialistically
coloured theory assumes that the bodily-physical should form
the basis, so that the bodily-physical brings forth the
soul-spiritual as one of its functions. A third theory is
that of psycho-physical parallelism, which assumes that the
soul-spiritual and bodily-physical matter equally, and only
to pursue how the functions of the one takes place beside the
other, without looking for any exchange taking place between
them. These are all psychological speculations. At the moment
a practical situation is present, through psychology, through
soul knowledge, it finds driving forces into the pedagogic
didactic impulses.
One
can simply say our sphere of observation of the soul-spiritual
human being has not yet reached a principle which we are
accustomed to follow naturally according to science. In natural
science for example, when we look at the phenomena where warmth
appears, without the usual kind of warmth coming forth as
usual, then this warmth from other circumstances is considered
as so-called latent warmth and how it had developed out of
latent conditions, and now appears as warmth. Such principles
which are common practice in science must — obviously
metamorphosed in corresponding manner — also be taken up
in the observation of the totality of the human being, in which
the soul-spiritual is included.
One
comes to such an approach of observation which is fully
justified by science — if it hasn't yet been seen today
— if one focuses on the first important transformation
which happen in the human organisation with the change of teeth
around the seventh year of life. Such transformations in the human
being are usually only observed outwardly. However, the change of
teeth is something which penetrates the entire human life
deeply. Whoever trains his abilities of observation will learn
to recognise how with the change of teeth an entire change in
the child's soul life takes place. He learns to recognise how
the child in the fullest sense of the word, didn't really live
“in himself”, but completely absorbed his soul-life
in his environment. He learns to perceive the most essential of
the driving forces in the child organism before the change of
teeth, which is imitation. Through imitation the child learns
movement.
One
can through unbiased observation determine precisely how the
movements from the father and mother or others in the child's
surroundings enter into the childlike organism itself. One can
follow how under healthy conditions speech is learnt under the
influence of imitation. One can see how the child, in the
fullest sense of the word, comes from his surroundings, with
his whole being. This alters completely with the development at
the change of teeth. Here we see how forces develop in the
child, enabling the child to bring forth independent
imagination, in which the inner child up to a certain degree is
set free from the surroundings, which is not so before his
seventh year of life. With the change of teeth, the child
acquires a certain introspection and becomes gradually more
accessible to abstraction.
Now
the childish nature is again conditioned by everything which
lives inwardly in the people surrounding the child, as it is
absorbed by the child. That is why in the second period of life
which begins with the change of teeth up to adolescence, is
seen in such a way that everything which develops in the child
is an adaptation of the people surrounding it. Not what the
people do in the child's surroundings, because that is
imitated, but in what lives in these people, this
means what comes to expression in their words, their attitude,
the direction of their thoughts, these are passed on to the
child — as it were not through imitation but through
taking up a power which is as part of him or her, as growth
and nutritional powers in them: the power of authority. What
is meant by the power of authority is not to be misunderstood
because for someone who has written
“The Philosophy of Freedom”
it is necessary to point out how this authority
principle comes under scrutiny in a certain phase of life. This
means not the entire education should be put down to what is
referred to today as the principle of authority. If one applies
the corresponding value to such observations then things become
ever more clearly differentiated and one gains the ability
gradually to not only being able to observe the transformation
in people from year to year, but also from month to month. What
then happens actually between the change of teeth and
puberty?
When you direct your gaze in order to learn what really happens
there between the seventh and fourteenth year — those are of
course only approximate numbers — the hidden forces within the
child's soul now come to be expressed outwardly. This is hidden
in the bodily nature and activates the expression of the human
organism, works also in the formation of the brain in the first
years of life and in the preparation of the speech organs,
works also in everything the child develops in his bodily
nature. Thus, you can say the following. Just as for instance
the warmth in a body is hidden and can become free under
certain circumstances, so the soul-spiritual, which works
latently in the first seven years in the physical organism,
expressed in every single movement, in every bodily process,
only becomes free later. After the seventh year of life the
body is left to itself more; the soul-spiritual does not
withdraw completely out of the bodily, yet it does to a high
degree. The change of teeth is then a kind of termination point
of the first developmental phase, where the soul-spiritual was
still in harmony with the bodily-physical.
You
see that through this manner of observation you can reach a
position where you are able to recognise a real relationship
between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical. People
don't theorize only around the question of how the one works
upon the other, and so on. People simply see the soul-spiritual
during one period of life as completely in the physical — this
is clearly seen in the child's development — and later, after
acquiring freedom, the form appears. So a comparison isn't made
of what had been understood as abstract concepts earlier, but
the reality is followed in the process of the soul-spiritual in
the bodily form during the various periods of life. This means,
however, that that which in natural science had been openly
researched through the outer senses is lifted up into the
spiritual sphere.
If
you were to enter more into the details, which Anthroposophy
wants to do, to penetrate it and not remain stuck in
superficial definitions, you would soon see what kind of a
faithful continuator of the justifiable scientific thinking of
the spiritual scientific anthroposophical viewpoint actually
is. Then, however, when in this way you gain the world of
concepts and ideas of human knowledge, then the accusations
regarding the alienation of the world of ideas is solved by
itself.
Dear friends! Anthroposophy is the last to be in opposition to
big and important events particularly during the
19th century in the pedagogical sphere, presented by
great educators of humanity on pedagogical principles.
Anthroposophy fully acknowledges the existence of great,
meaningful educational principles and does not stand back
before anyone in the recognition of the great educators. Only,
you have to admit nevertheless, with all great educational
principles there is often a certain dissatisfaction today
regarding educational practice, educational methods; the most
diverse kinds of educational practices bear witness to the fact
that this is so. Why is this so?
It
is often just a result of the intellectualism of our time. This
intellectualism results — more than one normally believes
— in a particular hostility towards life, especially in
the social areas. It breeds in relation to ideation actually
only abstraction. The abstract has no life-forces, it is in a
certain way the corpse of the spiritual and is experienced as
such. Even in having the most beautiful principles in which you
can almost glow with enthusiasm — as long as these principles
remain abstract, they can't obtain any kind of favourable
influence. Only when these principles are permeated through
with spirituality, living spirituality, which merges with the
beings of people, could these principles become practical.
Thus, Anthroposophy doesn't want to propose new educational
principles in an abstract manner; it only wants to be an
introduction for pedagogical and didactic skills, for the
implementation of the art of education and art of instruction,
and wants to present what the most beautiful educational
principles can't give: spiritual foundations for the practical
implementation, for the inner talents of teachers, to work in
the school and in education.
For
this reason, the Waldorf School is not so geared — as is
often believed — to take our world view as it is conveyed
to grownups, and to stuff it into our children. As a result, we
have to particularly stress that as far as religious
instruction go, the Catholic children are left to the Catholic
priests, and the evangelist children to the evangelist priest.
We have only arranged free religious instruction for those
dissident children and if these lessons had not been organized
they would have no religious education. As a result, some
experience of the religious feeling can be accomplished because
those parents who withdraw their children from religious
instruction, send their children now into religious instruction
in which we make the effort not to lecture Anthroposophy but to
present it as is required at that particular age of the child.
So it's not about depositing Anthroposophy into the childish
mind, but it comes down to the teachers working through
Anthroposophy, the pedagogical didactic methods employed in
such a way that they really fulfil true human education.
This results in, simply through the practical implementation of
such education and such teaching, not only in the child being
looked at but the whole person being considered. It would be
highly foolish to take the feet or hands as they are at a
child's age and regard them as something complete and force
them to remain as they are in childhood. It is obvious that we
consider a child's organism as something coming into being,
which has to be different later in life. However, in relation
to the soul-spiritual we don't always do the same thing. We
often even see rigid concepts introduced and that the child is
frequently taught from a young age as having something like
sharp contours in its soul. This is false! With anything which
we want to allow incorporation into the childish organism, it
must be introduced in a growing way, that it can gradually be
transformed so that the human being later, in his thirtieth
year for example, not only has a memory of what he had absorbed
in his childhood but that the content of this has been as
transformed by him as he had transformed his limbs. Everything
of a soul-spiritual nature we give the child must also contain
powers of growth, powers of transformation; that means we must
make our teaching more and more alive.
Certainly this could be expressed as an abstract principle but
practically it can only be accomplished when true intimate
human knowledge is present. Such a kind of intimate human
knowledge makes it possible to deduce everything from the
childish nature into what is understood as the syllabus and
goal of learning. Out of this the Waldorf School has taken its
syllabus and the objectives of learning from actual human
knowledge which can be read from month to month in the
developing childish nature itself. The effort has been made to
bring all of this about in a living sense.
I
only want to mention one thing. Today in various ways teaching
has improved even in some public tuition. But, you all know
that during the school year the child becomes even more
conscious than one is aware, and suffers under a system where
the progress of the child is judged. It depends on the one side
on the child's performance and on the other, the teacher's
judgement of this performance, and is expressed as:
“satisfactory”, “nearly satisfactory”,
“nearly not satisfactory”, “less
satisfactory” and so on. I have to confess to you, I was
never really capable of differentiating between “nearly
satisfactory” and “nearly not satisfactory”
and so on. With us in the Waldorf School it involves that out
of the totality of progress made by the end of each school year,
the child is given a kind of witnessing presented by the teacher
which characterises each individual child and that he simply
writes this on a piece of paper as his experience of that child.
So the child sees a kind of mirror image of himself, and this
practice — which doesn't depend on “satisfactory”,
“nearly satisfactory” and so on for the individual
items — has been accepted with a certain inner satisfaction
and received with joy, even when there is blame. The child also
receives a kind of powerful verse which echoes with his own nature,
which he takes up and which serves as a mission statement for the
following year.
In
this way one can, if one has the love for it, enter in a lively
way into education, even working through unfavourable
relationships in a lively way.
As
a result, we come again to something which needs to be
overcome, needs to be conquered in pedagogy and didactics in
our epoch. Today one will hardly find any evidence in the outer
historic descriptions, of how souls' constitutions have changed
during the single evolutionary epochs. Whoever is without bias
can readily understand how the spiritual utterances which were
revealed to souls during the 10th, 11th
and 12th Century for instance, are of a completely
different character than what had been presented since the
middle of the 15th Century to the soul constitutions
of civilised humanity. Yes, up to the 20th century
intellectualism in humanity has developed up to a culmination
point. Intellectualism has the peculiarity, that it — just
like the principle of imitation or authority — only shifts
at a particular human age out of its latent position and in the
case of intellectualism it is related to a later period in life.
We see how the human being only when he has reached puberty,
actually even later, becomes suitable to progress towards
intellectuality. Before this age intellectualism works in a
paralyzing, deadening way into soul activity.
As
a result, we can say we live in an epoch which is only
appropriate for grownups, which has as its most important
cultural impulse, something which should only come into
expression in adults. As a result, because our entire cultural
tone is set towards grown adults, we are actually unable to
understand the child — and even young people!
This is the most important aspect our civilization needs to
look at. We need to be clear that precisely through those
powers which our sciences and our technology have triumphed and
have been brought to such a great blossoming, we must take up
the possibility to fully understand the child and enter into
the human nature of the child. It just needs our own effort to
strike our bridge across to the young people and the child. What
appears in various forms as the youth movement — one can
say whatever one likes — has its deepest entitlement; it
is nothing other than the cry of the youth: ‘You grownups
have a civilization which we simply don't understand, when we
bring our basic natures to it!’ — This bridge between
the adult and the child's world must be discovered again, and to
this Anthroposophy will contribute.
When you go down from the general cultural point of view to the
individual you will once again find that these syllabi which
are deduced from the essence of the child itself, teach us what
syllabus we need to develop for the phases in the child's life.
Reading and writing were in earlier times something quite
different to what they are today. Take for example the letters:
they are something abstract, strangers in relation to life
actually. If we go even further back, we find something in the
pictorial writing which is directly related to life. We often
today don't even think about how intimately life was connected
to this image rich writing and how strange these are in life:
reading and writing. Yes, we stand within a civilization in
which it is natural to have the strangest elements in life
developed into civilization's goals. When we in an open-minded
way look at for instance a stenographer or a typist sitting at
a typewriter, we know that with such activities humanity has
been sucked into the strangest civilization.
My
dear friends, we don't want to be hostile to culture or become
reactionaries, when we express this. Nothing is to be said
about these means which have entered in modern times; they must
be there. Yet, powers of thought need to be developed which can
heal this once again, this, which if it is left to work all by
itself could only lead to a definite decline of culture and
lead to decadence. The most important moment in which a healing
remedy can be introduced, lies in education and in the
classroom, to be designed through education.
When the child enters elementary school, then it is indeed so,
that the intellect is drowsy. The ability for abstract
thinking, which first needs to be experienced through others,
only appears later. As a result, abstract forms of writing and
reading introduced to the child as it arrives in school, cannot
be related to. We can only take something which can reach the
child in a lively way, which works in the child itself already
as an artistic soul principle, something more pure and splendid
than any other art. This works on a subconscious level. We must
continue this way and try to find forms of a particular nature,
through which the child in an artistic way can be active in his
total being in the artistic form of writing which can evolve
into reading. With relevance to pedagogy, when the children
haven't learnt to read or write at the age of nine or ten, one
must have the courage to say: ‘Thank goodness that these
children can't read or write yet!’ — because it isn't
important for the child to learn this or that but that he or she
learns in the right way at the right age.
This is why the Waldorf School education is orientated in an
artistic way. Out of pedagogic-artistic principles it commences
and gradually leads over into the intellectual. We take into
account that music must appear early in education while this
has a relationship to development of the will forces. As a
result, we take into account that the usual physical education,
as animated gymnastics are given as Eurythmy, is inserted into
the lessons. It needs to be metamorphosed, transformed
pedagogically-didactically, then those who have observed it
discover that through this art of movement, the soul and spirit
have been provided with something meaningful. One discovers
that the child in his school-going education experiences him or
herself into the art of movement in a similar way as a small
child finds its way into speaking, with inner pleasure and
inner naturalness.
Working from an artistic basis results in the child handling
colours from very early on. Even though it is also sometimes
inconvenient and might mean more stringent cleaning rules need
to be applied, it will still affirm that the child enters more
deeply into life than otherwise. Brought into the bargain is
the development of a sense for life, that life doesn't go by
but that the child lives with the outer world, that it becomes
sensitive for everything which is beautiful, every encounter in
nature and in life being meaningful. This is more important
than the transference of details from this or that sphere on to
the child.
Added to all that I've only indicated in an outline, the
Anthroposophical foundation is what flows into the teacher's
mindset, what the teacher simply through his entire being
attributes to the pedagogical-didactic imponderables, when he
closes the classroom door behind him, when he steps in front of
the children. Whoever looks in a lively sense — not with
abstract ideas — how the child copies and adapts to his
environment, knows what works in the child in a soul-spiritual
way. The teacher gets to know the child and as a result obtains
the requirements with which to judge in quite a different way
than is usually done. I want to present an example of this.
You
learn quite a bit when you look at life in the following way.
Once parents came to me and said their young son, who up to
that point had been quite neat and tidy, had suddenly stolen
something. I asked: “How old is the child?” The
parents answered: “Five years.” I said: “Then
you must first examine what the child has actually done because
perhaps he has not stolen anything.” — What had he done
in fact? He took money out of the drawer in the same way his
mother takes money every morning when she wants to go shopping.
From the money the little boy had bought treats which he didn't
keep for himself but had given to other children. In this case
a person can say: There is no reason to see this as stealing;
the child simply saw what the mother did each morning and felt
capable of doing the same. The child is an imitator. Each
relationship of a child to the norms of adults, in which the
expressions “good” and “bad” appear,
only become applicable when the change of teeth has taken
place. Therefore, we must obtain a completely different way to
form judgements and learn that everything we do in the child's
surroundings need to be so orientated that the child can copy
them, can imitate them right into the imponderable thoughts
within them. This proves the reality of thoughts. Not only our
actions but also the manner and way of our thoughts give
substantiality. In the child's surroundings we should not give
in to any random thought because this works in on the child.
Therefore, we need to look into even the imponderables in
thoughts.
If
one looks at how the child up to his seventh year lives in his
environment one can get the impression of what the child had
been before he came down into the physical sense world. Up to
then — this is shown in anthroposophic research —
the person is surrounded by a soul-spiritual world which is
permeated by the cosmos, just like in the physical world his
body is connected to the physical world. We become able to see
that in the child's life, up to his seventh year, it has been a
true continuation of life before birth or conception. This however
must be transformed in the pedagogic-didactic experience so the
teacher, standing in front of the children, must say to
himself: The super-sensible worlds have given me something to
unravel, which I must level out in the path of my life.
Teaching and education really becomes an act of sacrifice
towards the whole world. There is a conviction being uttered
about teaching and education being a force and without which in
real teaching and real education, nothing can come about. This
conviction which hasn't been adopted from outside, but has come
through inner work, through the anthroposophical world view,
this is the most important in pedagogical-didactic work. You
stand with shy religious reverence to what is hidden within the
child's body, you look at one who has risen from eternal world
foundations which is gradually revealed in childish movements,
gestures and so on, and you know that the riddle of life needs
to be solved in a practical way. Only in this way are the
entire teach, and educational convictions directed correctly.
This atmosphere which spreads in all activities, which needs to
take place in the school life, is what Anthroposophy above all
wants to have within the teaching and educational being and
from where all details need their direction. However, to be
master of them, it is necessary that you, through true inner
observation of the smallest movement of the child's life, see
how the spirit works right into its very fingertips. The
teacher will acquire an inner overall view so that he out of an
ability, which must become an instinct, meets his class in the
spirit and skilfulness that come from his internal processing
of the anthroposophical world view.
Here are a few indications which I was able to give; they could
be implemented further in the next lectures. These indications
should show that Anthroposophy doesn't want to be radically
against great pedagogic accomplishments but that it will be the
assistant to the great one, if we are not to remain stuck in
abstractions, so that we can enter practical life in a vital
way, in order for the art of education to become a real
impulse, an effective factor in our social life!
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