YOU
will have seen from these lectures, which lay down methods of
teaching, that we are gradually nearing the mental insight from
which should spring the actual timetable. Now I have told you
on different occasions already that we must agree, with regard
to what we accept in our school and how we accept it, to
compromise with conditions already existing. For we cannot, for
the time being, create for the Waldorf School the entire social
world to which it really belongs. Consequently, from this
surrounding social world there will radiate influences which
will continually frustrate the ultimate ideal time-table of the
Waldorf School. But we shall only be good teachers of the
Waldorf School if we know in what relation the ideal time-table
stands to the time-table which we will have to use at first
because of the ascendancy of the social world outside. This
will result for us in the most vital difficulties which we must
therefore mention before going on, and these will arise in
connection with the pupils, with the children, immediately at
the beginning of the elementary school period and then again at
the end. At the very beginning of the elementary school course
there will, of course, be difficulties, because there
exist the time-tables of the outside world. In these
time-tables all kinds of educational aim are required, and we
cannot risk letting our children, after the first or second
year at school, fall short of the learning shown by the
children educated and taught outside our school. After nine
years of age, of course, by our methods our children should
have far surpassed them, but in the intermediate stage it might
happen that our children were required to show in some way, let
us say, at the end of the first year in school, before a board
of external commissioners, what they can do. Now it is not a
good thing for the children that they should be able to do just
what is demanded to-day by an external commission. And our
ideal time-table would really have to have other aims than
those set by a commission of this kind. In this way the
dictates of the outside world partially frustrate the ideal
time-table. This is the case with the beginning of our course
in the Waldorf School. In the upper classes
[Dr. Steiner refers
to the beginning of the Waldorf School when the higher classes
were from the ages of 12 to 14.]
of the Waldorf School, of
course, we are concerned with children, with pupils who have
come in from other educational institutions, and who have not
been taught on the methods on which they should have been
taught.
The
chief mistake attendant to-day on the teaching of children
between seven and twelve is, of course, the fact that they are
taught far too intellectually. However much people may hold
forth against intellectualism, the intellect is considered far
too much. We shall consequently get children coming in with
already far more pronounced characteristics of old age —
even senility — than children between twelve and fourteen
should show. That is why when, in these days, our youth itself
appears in a reforming capacity, as with the Scouts
(Pfadfinder) and similar movements, where it makes its own
demands as to how it is to be educated and taught, it reveals
the most appalling abstractness, that is, senility. And
particularly when youth desires, as do the
“Wandervögel,” to be taught really
youthfully, it craves to be taught on senile principles. That
is an actual fact to-day. We came up against it very sharply
ourselves in a commission on culture, where a young
Wandervögel, or member of some youth movement, got
up to speak. He began to read off his very tedious abstract
statements of how modern youth desires to be taught and
educated. They were too boring for some people because they
were nothing but platitudes; moreover, they were platitudes
afflicted with senile decay. The audience grew restless, and
the young orator hurled into its midst: “I declare that
the old folks to-day do not understand youth.” The only
fact in evidence, however, was that this half-child was too
much of an old man because of a thwarted education and
perverted teaching.
Now
this will have to be taken most seriously into account with the
children who come into the school at twelve to fourteen, and to
whom, for the time being, we are to give, as it were, the
finishing touch. The great problems for us arise at the
beginning and end of the school years. We must do our utmost to
do justice to our ideal time-table, and we must do our utmost
not to estrange children too greatly from modern life.
But
above all we must seek to include in the first school year a
great deal of simple talking with the children. We read to them
as little as possible, but prepare our lessons so well that we
can tell them everything that we want to teach them. We aim at
getting the children to tell again what they have heard us tell
them. But we do not adapt reading-passages which do not fire
the fantasy; we use, wherever possible, reading-passages which
excite the imagination profoundly; that is, fairy tales. As
many fairy tales as possible. And after practising for some
time with the child this telling of stories and retelling of
them, we encourage him a little to tell very shortly his own
experiences. We let him tell us, for instance, about
something which he himself likes to tell about. In all this
telling of stories, and telling them over, and telling about
personal experiences, we guide, quite un-pedantically, the
dialect into the way of educated speech, by simply correcting
the mistakes which the child makes — at first he
will do nothing but make mistakes, of course; later on, fewer
and fewer. We show him, by telling stories and having them
retold, the way from dialect to educated conversation. We can
do all this, and in spite of it the child will have reached the
standard demanded of him at the end of the first school
year.
Then, indeed, we must make room for something which would be
best absent from the very first year of school and which is
only a burden on the child's soul: we shall have to teach him
what a vowel is, and what a consonant is. If we could follow
the ideal time-table we would not do this in the first school
year. But then some inspector might turn up at the end of the
first year and ask the child what “i” is, what
“l” is, and the child would not know that one is a
vowel and the other a consonant. And we should be told:
“Well, you see, this ignorance comes of
Anthroposophy.” For this reason we must take care that
the child can distinguish vowels from consonants. We must
also teach him what a noun is, what an article is. And here we
find ourselves in a real dilemma. For according to the
prevailing time-table we ought to use German terms and not say
“artikel.” We have to talk to the child, according
to current regulations, of “Geschlechtswort”
(gender-words) instead of “artikel,” and here, of
course, we find ourselves in the dilemma. It would be better at
this point not to be pedantic and to retain the word
“artikel.” Now I have already indicated how a noun
should be distinguished from an adjective by showing the child
that a noun refers to objects in space around him, to
self-contained objects. You must try here to say to him:
“Now take a tree: a tree is a thing which goes on
standing in space. But look at a tree in winter, look at a tree
in spring, and look at a tree in summer. The tree is always
there, but it looks different in winter, in summer, in spring.
In winter we say: ‘It is brown.’ In spring we say: ‘It is
green.’ In summer we say: ‘It is leafy.’ These are its
attributes.” In this way we first show the child the
difference between something which endures and its attributes,
and say: “When we use a word for what persists, it is a
noun; when we use a word for the changing quality of something
that endures it is an adjective.” Then we give the child
an idea of activity: “Just sit down on your chair. You
are a good child. Good is an adjective. But now stand up and
run. You are doing something. That is an action.” We
describe this action by a verb. That is, we try to draw the
child up to the thing, and then we go from the thing over to
the words. In this way, without doing the child too much harm,
we shall be able to teach him what a noun is, an article, an
adjective, a verb. The hardest of all, of course, is to
understand what an article is, because the child cannot yet
properly understand the connection of the article with the
noun. We shall flounder fairly badly in an abstraction when we
try to teach him what an article is. But he has to learn it.
And it is far better to flounder in abstractions over it
because it is unnatural in any case, than to contrive all kinds
of artificial devices for making clear to the child the
significance and the nature of the article, which is, of
course, impossible.
In
short, it will be a good thing for us to teach with complete
awareness that we are introducing something new into teaching.
The first school year will afford us plenty of opportunity for
this. Even in the second year a good deal of this awareness
will invade our teaching. But the first year will include much
that is of great benefit to the growing child. The first school
year will include not only writing, but an elementary,
primitive kind of painting-drawing, for this is, of course, our
point of departure for teaching writing. The first school year
will include not only singing, but also an elementary training
in the playing of a musical instrument. From the first we
shall not only let the child sing, but we shall take him to the
instrument. This, again, will prove a great boon to the child.
We teach him the elements of listening by means of
sound-combinations. And we try to preserve the balance between
the production of music from within by song, and the hearing of
sounds from outside, or by making them on the instrument.
These elements, painting-drawing, drawing with colours, finding
the way into music, will provide for us, particularly in the
first school year, a wonderful element of that will-formation
which is almost quite foreign to the school of to-day. And if
we further transform the little mite's physical training into
Eurhythmy we shall contribute in a quite exceptional degree to
the formation of the will.
I
have been presented with the usual time-table for the first
school year. It consists of:
Religion — two hours a week.
The mother tongue — eleven hours a week.
Writing — there is no figure given for the number of
hours, for it is included in the mother tongue.
Then:
Local geography — two hours a
week.
Arithmetic — four hours a week.
Singing and gymnastics together — one
hour a week.
[The word hours is the translation of
Schulstunden — 50 mts. with intervals between.]
We
shall not be guilty of this, for we should then sin too gravely
against the well-being of the growing child. But we shall
arrange, as far as ever it is in our power, for the singing and
music and the gymnastics and Eurhythmy to be in the afternoon,
and the rest in the morning, and we shall take, in moderation
— until we think they have had enough — singing and
music and gymnastics and Eurhythmy with the children in the
afternoon. For to devote one hour a week to these subjects is
quite ludicrous. That alone proves to you how the whole of
teaching is now directed towards the intellect.
In
the first year in the elementary school we are concerned, after
all, with six-year-old children or with children at the most a
few months over six. With such children you can quite well
study the elements of painting and drawing, of music, and even
of gymnastics and Eurhythmy; but if you take religion with them
in the modern manner you do not teach them religion at all; you
simply train their memory and that is the best that can be said
about it. For it is absolutely senseless to talk to
children of six to seven of ideas which play a part in
religion. They can only be stamped on his memory. Memory
training, of course, is quite good, but one must be aware that
it here involves introducing the child to all kinds of things
which have no meaning for the child at this age.
Another feature of the time-table for the first year will
provoke us to an opinion different from the usual one, at least
in practice. This feature reappears in the second year in a
quite peculiar guise, even as a separate subject, as
Schönschreiben (literally, pretty writing =
calligraphy). In evolving writing from
“painting-drawing” we shall obviously not need to
cultivate “ugly writing” and “pretty
writing” as separate subjects. We shall take pains to
draw no distinction between ugly writing and pretty
writing and to arrange all written work — and we shall be
able to do this in spite of the outside time-table — so
that the child always writes beautifully, as beautifully as he
can, never suggesting to him the distinction between good
writing and bad writing. And if we take pains to tell the child
stories for a fairly long time, and to let him repeat them, and
pay attention all the time to correct speaking on our part, we
shall only need to take spelling at first from the point of
view of correcting mistakes. That is, we shall not need
to introduce correct writing, Rechtschreiben (spelling), and
incorrect writing as two separate branches of the writing
lesson.
You
see in this connection we must naturally pay great attention to
our own accuracy. This is especially difficult for us Austrians
in teaching. For in Austria, besides the two languages, the
dialect and the educated everyday speech, there was a third.
This was the specific “Austrian School Language.”
In this all long vowels were pronounced short and all short
vowels long, and whereas the dialect quite correctly talked of
“Die Sonne” (the sun), the Austrian school language
did not say “Die Sonne” but “Die
Sohne,” and this habit of talking becomes involuntary;
one is constantly relapsing into it, as a cat lands on
his paws. But it is very unsettling for the teacher too. The
further one travels from north to south the more does one sink
in the slough of this evil. It rages most virulently in
Southern Austria. The dialect talks rightly of “Der
SÅ«Å«n”; the school language teaches
us to say “Der Son.” So that we say “Der
Son” for a boy and “Die Sohne” for what
shines in the sky. That is only the most extreme case. But if
we take care, in telling stories, to keep all really long
sounds long and all short ones short, all sharp ones sharp, all
drawn-out ones prolonged, and all soft ones soft, and to take
notice of the child's pronunciation, and to correct it
constantly, so that he speaks correctly, we shall be laying the
foundations for correct writing. In the first year we do
not need to do much more than lay right foundations. Thus, in
dealing with spelling, we do not yet need to let the child
write lengthening or shortening signs, as even permitted in the
usual school time-table — we can spend as long as we like
over speaking, and only in the last instance introduce the
various rules of spelling. This is the kind of thing to which
we must pay heed when we are concerned with the right treatment
of children at the beginning of their school life.
The
children near the end of the school life, at the age of
thirteen to fourteen, come to us maltreated by the
intellectual process. The teaching they have received has
been too much concerned with the intellect. They have
experienced far too few of the benefits of will- and
feeling-training. Consequently, we shall have to make up for
lost ground, particularly in these last years. We shall have to
attempt, whenever opportunity offers, to introduce will and
feeling into the exclusively intellectual approach, by
transforming much of what the children have absorbed purely
intellectually into an appeal to the will and feelings.
We can assume at any rate that the children whom we get at this
age have learnt, for instance, the theorem of Pythagoras the
wrong way, that they have not learnt it in the way we have
discussed. The question is how to contrive in this case not
only to give the child what he has missed but to give him over
and above that, so that certain powers which are already dried
up and withered are stimulated afresh as far as they can be
revived. So we shall try, for instance, to recall to the
child's mind the theorem of Pythagoras. We shall say:
“You have learnt it. Can you tell me how it goes? Now you
have said the theorem of Pythagoras to me. The square on the
hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two
sides.”
But
it is absolutely certain that the child has not had the
experience which learning this should give his soul. So I do
something more. I do not only demonstrate the theorem to him in
a picture, but I show how it develops. I let him see it in a
quite special way. I say: “Now three of you come out
here. One of you is to cover this surface with chalk: all of
you see that he only uses enough chalk to cover the surface.
The next one is to cover this surface with chalk; he will have
to take another piece of chalk. The third will cover this,
again with another piece of chalk.” And now I say to the
boy or girl who has covered the square on the hypotenuse:
“You see, you have used just as much chalk as both the
others together. You have spread just as much on your square as
the other two together, because the square on the hypotenuse is
equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.”
That is, I make it vivid for him by the use of chalk. It sinks
deeper still into his soul when he reflects that some of the
chalk has been ground down and is no longer on the piece of
chalk but is on the board. And now I go on to say: “Look,
I will divide the squares; one into sixteen, the other into
nine, the other into twenty-five squares. Now I am going to put
one of you into the middle of each square, and you are to think
that it is a field and you have to dig it up. The children who
have worked at the twenty-five little squares in this piece
will then have done just as much work as the children who have
turned over the piece with sixteen squares and the children who
have turned over the piece with nine squares together. But the
square on the hypotenuse has been dug up by your labour; you,
by your work, have dug up the square on one of the two sides,
and you, by your work, have dug up the square on the other
side.” In this way I connect the child's will with the
theorem of Pythagoras. I connect at least the idea with an
exercise rooted significantly in his will in the outside world,
and I again bring to life what his cranium had imbibed more or
less dead.
Now
let us suppose the child has already learnt Latin or Greek. I
try to make the children not only speak Latin and Greek but
listen to one another as well, listen to each systematically
when one speaks Latin, another Greek. And I try to make the
difference live vividly for them which exists between the
nature of the Greek and Latin languages. I should not need to
do this in the ordinary course of teaching, for this
realization would result of itself with the ideal time-table.
But we need it with the children from outside, because the
child must feel: when he speaks Greek he really only speaks
with the larynx and chest; when he speaks Latin there is
something of the whole being accompanying the sound of the
language. I must draw the child's attention to this. Then I
will point out to him the living quality of French when he
speaks that, and how it resembles Latin very closely. When he
talks English he almost spits the sounds out. The chest is less
active in English than in French. In English a tremendous
amount is thrown away and sacrificed. In fact, many
syllables are literally spat out before they work. You need not
say “spat out” to the children, but make them
understand how, in the English language particularly, the
word is dying towards its end. You will try like this to
emphasize the introduction of the element of articulation into
your language teaching with those children of twelve to
fourteen whom you have taken over from the schools of
to-day.
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