|
T H E
C H I L D ' S C H A N G I N G C O N S C I O U S N E S S
Lecture Three
DORNACH, APRIL 17, 1923
Yesterday I pointed out that there is much more involved
in learning to walk, speak, and think — the three most
important activities of early childhood — than is
apparent outwardly. I also indicated that it is impossible to
observe the human being completely without distinguishing
between what is internal and what is external. When considering
the organization of the whole human being, who is made up of
body, soul, and spirit, it is especially necessary to develop a
refined faculty of discrimination, and this is particularly
true in the field of education.
Let
us first look at what is very simply called “learning to
walk.” I have already mentioned that a part of this
activity is connected with how the child establishes
equilibrium in the surrounding physical world. The entire,
lifelong relationship to static and dynamic forces is involved
in this activity. Furthermore, we have seen how this seeking,
this striving for balance, this differentiation of arm and hand
movements from those of the legs and feet, also forms the basis
for the child's faculty of speech. And how, arising out of this
faculty, the new faculty of thinking is gradually born.
However, in this dynamic system of forces that the child takes
hold of in learning how to walk, there lives yet something else
that is of a fundamentally different character. I noted this
briefly yesterday, but now we must consider it more fully.
You
must always bear in mind that, pre-eminently during the first
stage of childhood, but also up to the change of teeth, the
child is one big sense organ. This is what makes children
receptive to everything that comes from their surroundings. But
it also causes them to recreate inwardly everything that is
going on in their environment. One could say — to choose
just one particular sense organ — that a young child is
all eye. Just as the eye receives stimuli from the external
world and, in keeping with its organization, reproduces what is
happening there, so human beings during the first period of
life inwardly reproduce everything that happens around
them.
But
the child takes in what is thus coming from the environment
with a specific, characteristic form of inner experience. For
example, when seeing the father or the mother moving a hand or
an arm, the child will immediately feel an impulse to make a
similar movement. And so, by imitating the movements of others
in the immediate environment, the usual irregular and fidgety
movements of the baby gradually become more purposeful. In this
way the child also learns to walk.
But
we must not overemphasize the aspect of heredity in the
acquisition of this faculty, because this constant reference to
heredity is merely a fashion in contemporary natural-scientific
circles. Whether a child first puts down the heel or the toes
when walking is also is due to imitating the father, mother, or
anyone else who is close. Whether a child is more inclined to
imitate one parent or the other depends on how close the
connection is with the particular person, the affinity
“in between the lines” of life, if I may put it
this way. An exceedingly fine psychological-physiological
process is happening here that cannot be recognized by the
blunt tools of today's theories of heredity. To express it more
pictorially: Just as the finer particles fall through the
meshes of a sieve while the coarser ones are retained, so does
the sieve of the modern world-view allow the finer elements of
what is actually happening to slip through. In this way only
the coarser similarities between child and father, or child and
mother, only the “rough and ready” side of life is
reckoned with, disregarding life's finer and more subtle
points. The teacher and educator, however, need a trained eye
for what is specifically human.
Now
it would be natural to assume that it must surely be deep love
that motivates a child to imitate one particular person. But if
one looks at how love is revealed in later life, even in a very
loving person, one will come to realize that if one maintains
that the child chooses by means of love, then what is actually
happening has not been fully appreciated. For in reality, the
child chooses to imitate out of an even higher motive than that
of love. The child is prompted by what one might, in later
life, call religious or pious devotion. Although this may sound
paradoxical, it is nevertheless true. The child's entire
sentient-physical behavior in imitation flows from a physical
yearning to become imbued with feelings found in later life
only in deeply religious devotion or during participation in a
religious ritual. This soul attitude is strongest during the
child's earliest years, and it continues, gradually declining,
until the change of teeth. The physical body of a newborn baby
is totally permeated by an inner need for deeply religious
devotion. What we call love in later life is just a weakened
form of this pious and devotional reverence.
It
could be said that until the change of teeth the child is
fundamentally an imitative being. But the kind of inner
experience that pulses through the child's imitation as its
very life blood — and here I must ask you not to
misunderstand what I am going to say, for sometimes one has to
resort to unfamiliar modes of expression to characterize
something that has become alien to our culture — this is
religion in a physical, bodily guise.
Until the change of teeth, the child lives in a kind of
“bodily religion.” We must never underestimate the
delicate influences (one could also call them imponderable
influences) that, only through a child's powers of perception,
emanate from the environment, summoning an urge to imitate. We
must in no way underestimate this most fundamental and
important aspect of the child's early years. Later on we will
see the tremendous significance that this has for both the
principles and practical methods of education.
When contemporary natural science examines such matters, the
methods used appear very crude, to say the least. To illustrate
what I mean, I would like to tell you the case of the
mathematician horses that, for awhile, caused a sensation in
Germany. I have not seen these Dusseldorf horses myself, but I
was in a position to carefully observe the horse belonging to
Herr von Osten of Berlin, who played such a prominent part in
this affair. It was truly amazing to witness how adept his
horse was at simple mathematical calculations. The whole thing
caused a great sensation and an extensive treatise dealing with
this phenomenon was quickly published by a university lecturer,
who came to the following conclusion.
This horse possesses such an unusually fine sensibility that it
can perceive the slightest facial expressions of its master,
Herr von Osten, as he stands next to it. These facial
expressions are so fine that even a human being could not
detect them. And when Herr von Osten gives his horse an
arithmetical task, he naturally knows the answer in his head.
He communicates this answer to the horse with very subtle
facial expressions that the horse can perceive. In this way it
can “stamp” the answers on the ground.
If,
however, one's thinking is even more accurate than that of
contemporary mathematical sciences, one might ask this lecturer
how he could prove his theory. It would be impossible
for him to do so. My own observations, on the other hand, led
me to a different conclusion. I noticed that in his grey-brown
coat Herr von Osten had large, bulging pockets out of which he
took sugar lumps and small sweets that he shoved into the
horse's mouth during his demonstrations. This ensured an
especially close and intimate relationship, a physically-based
affinity between steed and master. And due to this intimate
physical relationship, this deep-seated attachment, which was
constantly being renewed, a very close soul communication
between a man and a horse came about. It was a far more
intimate process than the horse's supposedly more intellectual
and outward observation of its master's facial expressions.
Indeed, a real communication from soul to soul had taken
place.
If
it is possible to observe such a phenomenon even in an animal,
then you can comprehend the kind of soul communication that can
exist in a little child, especially if permeated by deeply
religious devotion. You must realize how everything the child
makes its own grows from this religious mood, which is still
fully centered within the physical body. Anyone who can observe
how the child, with its inner attitude of religious surrender,
surrenders to the influences of the surrounding world, and
anyone who can discern in all these processes what the child
individually pours into the static and dynamic forces, will
discover precisely in this physical response the inherent
impulses of its later destiny. However strange it may sound,
what Goethe's friend Knebel in his old age once said to Goethe
is still true
[Karl Ludwig von Knebel (1744–1834) German
poet and tutor at the Court of Weimar.]:
Anyone who looks back over one's past life will find that, when
we have experienced a significant event and then look back at
what led up to it, it becomes apparent that we were steered
toward it. We find that it was not just one previous step, but
a whole series of previous steps, that now make it appear as if
we had been striving toward the decisive event from a deep
inner soul impulse.
If
such an event is connected with someone else, the person
concerned will think (provided one can extricate oneself from
the turmoil of life and perceive the finer nuances of physical
existence): This is not an illusion, or something I have
dreamed up; but if, at a decisive moment in life, I have found
another human being with whom I am more intimately connected
than with other people, then I really have been seeking this
person, whom I must have already known long before we met for
the first time.
The
most intimate matters in life are closely connected with how
the child finds its way into the static and dynamic realm. If
one can develop a faculty for observing such things, one will
find that an individual's destiny already begins to be revealed
in a strangely sense-perceptible form by how a child begins to
place the feet on the ground, in how a child begins to bend the
knees, or in the way a child begins to use the fingers. All of
this is not merely outwardly or materially significant, but it
reflects what is most spiritual in the human being.
When a child begins to speak, it adapts itself to a wider
circle. In learning the mother tongue, this circle embraces all
who share the same language. Now the child is no longer
restricted to the narrow circle of people who provide a more
intimate social background. In living into the mother tongue,
the child also adapts to something broader than the static and
dynamic forces. One could say that, in learning to speak, the
child lives into its folk soul, into the genius of its mother
tongue. And since language is thoroughly spiritual, the child
still lives in something spiritual, but no longer in a
spirituality only connected with the individual human being,
something that is a matter of individual destiny, but something
that receives the child into the wider circle of life.
When the child learns to think — well, with thinking we
do not remain in the realm of the individual at all. In New
Zealand, for example, people think exactly the same as we do
here today. It is the entire Earth realm that we adapt
ourselves to when as children we develop thinking from speech.
In speaking we still remain within a smaller circle of life. In
thinking, we enter the realm of humanity as a whole. This is
how the child's life circles are expanded through walking,
speaking, and thinking. And through discrimination one will
find the fundamental links between the way a child adapts
itself to the of static and dynamic forces, and its future
destiny during earthly life.
Here we see the work of what we have been calling in
anthroposophy the I-being of the human individual. For
us, this term does not imply anything abstract, it merely
serves to pinpoint a specifically human feature. Similarly,
through the medium of language, we see something emerge in the
human being that is entirely different from the individual I.
Therefore we say that in language the human astral body is
working. This astral body can also be observed in the animal
world, but there it does not work in an outward direction. In
the animal it is connected more with the inner being, creating
the animal's form. We also create our form, but we take away a
small part of this formative element and use it to develop
language. In speech the astral body is actively engaged. And in
thinking, which has this universal quality and is also
specifically different from the other two faculties, something
is happening where we could say that the human etheric body is
working. Only when we come to human sense perception do we find
the entire physical body in collaboration.
I
do not mind if, for the time being, you treat these statements
more or less as definitions. At this point it is not an
important issue, for we are not interested in splitting
philosophical hairs. We are merely trying to indicate what life
itself reveals. And this needs to be based on a knowledge of
the human being that can lead us to a true form of education,
one that encompasses both theory and practice.
When looking at such a progression of development, we find that
the human being's highest member, the I, is the first to
emerge, followed by the astral body and etheric body.
Furthermore, we can see how the soul and spiritual
organization, working in the I, astral, and etheric bodies, is
working on the physical body until the change of teeth. All
three members are working in the physical body.
The
second dentition announces a great change that affects the
child's whole life. We can first observe it in a particular
phenomenon. What would you say is the most striking factor of
early childhood? It is, as I have described it just now, the
child's physical-religious devotion to its environment. This is
really the most decisive characteristic. Then the child loses
the baby teeth, which is followed by years of developing a
certain soulspiritual constitution, particularly in the years
between the change of teeth and puberty.
You
see, what has been working physically during the first period
of life will later, after the child has gone through puberty,
reappear transformed as thought. The young child cannot in any
way yet develop the kind of thinking that leads to an
experience of religious devotion. During this time of childhood
— first before the change of teeth, but also continuing
until puberty — these two things keep each other at a
distance, so to speak. The child's thinking, even between the
change of teeth and puberty, does not yet take hold of the
religious element. One could compare this situation with
certain alpine rivers that have their sources high up in the
mountains and that, on their way down, suddenly seem to
disappear as they flow through underground caves, only to
reappear lower down along their further courses. What appears
as a natural religious reverence during the years leading to
the change of teeth withdraws inward, takes on an entirely
transformed soul quality, and seems to disappear altogether.
Only later in life, when the human being gains the capacity to
consciously experience a religious mood, does it reappear,
taking hold of a person's thinking and ideation.
If
one can observe such transformations, one will find external
observation even more meaningful. As I mentioned already in the
first lecture, I am not at all against the more external forms
of observation, which are fully justified. Yet, at the same
time, we must realize that these methods cannot offer a
foundation for the art of education. Experimental child
psychology, for example, has discovered the curious phenomenon
that children whose parents anxiously try to engender a
religious attitude, who try to drum religion into their
children, such children achieve poor results in their religion
lessons at school. In other words, it has been established that
the correlation coefficient between the children's
accomplishments in religious instruction and the religious
attitude of their parents is very low during the years spent in
primary education.
Yet
one look at human nature is enough to discover reasons for this
phenomenon. No matter how often such parents may talk about
their own religious attitude, no matter what beautiful words
they may speak, it has no meaning for the child at all. They
simply pass the child by. For anything directed to the child's
reason, even if formulated in terms intended to appeal to the
child's feelings, will fail to have any impact, at least until
the time of the change of teeth. The only way of avoiding such
heedlessness is for the adults around the child, through their
actions and general behavior, to give the child the possibility
to imitate and absorb a genuine religious element right into
the finest articulation of the vascular system. This is then
worked on inwardly, approximately between the seventh and
fourteenth year. Like the alpine river flowing underground, it
will surface again at puberty in the form of a capacity for
conceptualization.
So
we should not be surprised if a generous helping of outer piety
and religious sentiment aimed at the child's well-being will
simply miss the mark. Only the actions performed in the child's
vicinity will speak. To express it somewhat paradoxically, the
child will ignore words, moral admonitions, and even the
parents' attitudes, just as the human eye will ignore something
that is colorless. Until the change of teeth, the child is an
imitator through and through.
Then, with the change of teeth, the great change occurs. What
was formerly a physically based surrender to a religious mood
ceases to exist. And so we should not be surprised when the
child, who has been totally unaware of any innate religious
attitude, becomes a different being between the change of teeth
and puberty. But what I have pointed out just now can reveal
that, only at puberty, the child reaches an intellectual mode
of comprehension. Earlier, its thinking cannot yet comprehend
intellectual concepts, because the child's thinking, between
the change of teeth and puberty, can only unite with what is
pictorial. Pictures work on the senses. Altogether, during the
first period of life ending with the change of teeth, pictures
of all the activities being performed within its environment
work on the child. Then, with the onset of the second set of
teeth, the child begins to take in the actual content presented
in pictorial form. And we must pour this pictorial element into
everything that we approach the child with, into everything we
bring to the child through language.
I
have characterized what comes toward the child through the
element of statics and dynamics. But through the medium of
language a much wider, an immensely varied element, comes
within reach of the child. After all, language is only a link
in a long chain of soul experiences. Every experience belonging
to the realm of language has an artistic nature. Language
itself is an artistic element, and we have to consider this
artistic element above everything else in the time between the
change of teeth and puberty.
Don't imagine for a moment that with these words I am
advocating a purely esthetic approach to education, or that I
want to exchange fundamental elements of learning with all
kinds of artificial or esthetically contrived methods, even if
these may appear artistically justified. Far from it! I have no
intention of replacing the generally uncultured element, so
prevalent in our present civilization, with a markedly Bohemian
attitude toward life. (For the sake of our Czech friends
present, I should like to stress that I do not in any way
associate a national or geographical trait with the term
Bohemian. I use it only in its generally accepted sense,
denoting the happy-golucky attitude of people who shun
responsibilities, who disregard accepted rules of conduct, and
who do not take life seriously.) The aim is not to replace the
pedantic attitude that has crept into our civilization with a
disregard of fundamental rules or with a lack of
earnestness.
Something entirely different is required when one is faced with
children between the change of teeth and puberty. Here one has
to consider that at this age their thinking is not yet logical,
but has a completely pictorial character. True to nature, such
children reject a logical approach. They want to live in
pictures. Highly intelligent adults make little impression on
children aged seven, nine, eleven, or even thirteen. At that
age, they feel indifferent toward intellectual accomplishment.
On the other hand, adults with an inner freshness (which does
not, however, exclude a sense of discretion), people of a
friendly and kindly disposition do make a deep impression on
children. People whose voices have a ring of tenderness, as if
their words were caressing the child, expressing approval and
praise, reach the child's soul. This personal impact is what
matters, because with the change of teeth the child no longer
surrenders solely to surrounding activities. Now a new openness
awakens to what people are actually saying, to what adults say
with the natural authority they have developed. This reveals
the most characteristic element inherent in the child between
the change of teeth and puberty.
Certainly you would not expect me, who more than thirty years
ago wrote the book
Intuitive Thinking: A Philosophy of Freedom,
to stand here and plead authoritarian principles.
Nevertheless, insofar as children between the change of teeth
and puberty are concerned, authority is absolutely necessary.
It is a natural law in the life of the souls of children.
Children at this particular stage in life who have not learned
to look up with a natural sense of surrender to the authority
of the adults who brought them up, the adults who educated
them, cannot grow into a free human beings. Freedom is won only
through a voluntary surrender to authority during
childhood.
Just as during the first period of life children imitate all of
the surrounding activities, so also during the second period of
life they follow the spoken word. Of course, this has to be
understood in a general way. Immensely powerful spiritual
substance flows into children through language, which,
according to their nature, must remain characteristically
pictorial. If one observes how, before the change of teeth,
through first learning to speak, children dreamily follow
everything that will become fundamental for later life, and how
they wake up only after the change of teeth, then one can gain
a picture of what meets children through the way we use
language in their presence during the second period of
life.
Therefore we must take special care in how, right at this
stage, we work on children through the medium of language.
Everything we bring must speak to them, and if this does not
happen, they will not understand. If, for example, you
factually describe a plant to a young child, it is like
expecting the eye to understand the word red. The eye
can understand only the color red, not the word. A child
cannot understand an ordinary description of a plant. But as
soon as you tell the child what the plant is saying and doing,
there will be immediate understanding. The child also has to be
treated with an understanding of human nature. We will hear
more about this later when we discuss the practical aspects of
teaching. Here I am more concerned with presenting a basic
outline.
And
so we see how an image-like element pervades and unites what we
meet in the child's threefold activity of walking, speaking,
and thinking. Likewise, activities occurring around the child,
which were at first perceived in a dreamy way, are also
transformed, strangely enough, into pictures during this second
period between the change of teeth and puberty. The child
begins to dream, as it were, about the surrounding activities,
whereas during the first period of life these outer activities
were followed very soberly and directly, and simply imitated.
And the thoughts of the child are not yet abstract, nor yet
logical; they are also still pictures. Between the second
dentition and puberty, children live in what comes through
language, with its artistic and pictorial element. Thus, only
what is immersed in imagery will reach the child. This is why
the development of a child's memory is particularly strong at
this age.
And
now, once again, I have to say something that will make learned
psychologists shudder inwardly and give them metaphorical goose
flesh. That is, children receive their memory only with the
change of teeth. The cause for such goose flesh is simply that
these things are not observed properly. Someone might say,
“What appears as memory in a child after the change of
teeth surely must have already existed before, even more
strongly, because the child then had an inborn memory, and all
kinds of things could be remembered even better than later
on.” This would be about as correct as saying that a dog,
after all, is really a wolf, and that there is no difference
between the two. And if one pointed out that a dog has
experienced entirely different living conditions and that,
although descended from the wolf, it is no longer a wolf, the
reply might be, “Well, a dog is only a domesticated
version of a wolf, for the wolf's bite is worse than the dog's
bite.” This kind of thing would be somewhat analogous to
saying that the memory of a child is stronger prior to the
change of teeth than afterward. One must be able to observe
actual reality.
What is this special kind of memory in the young child that
later memory is descended from? It is still an inner habit.
When taking in the spoken word, a refined inner habit is formed
in the child, who absorbs everything through imitation. And out
of this earlier, specially developed habit — which still
has a more physical quality — a soul habit is formed when
the child begins the change of teeth. It is this habit, formed
in the soul realm, that is called memory. One must
differentiate between habit that has entered the soul life and
habit in the physical realm, just as one has to distinguish
between dog and wolf — otherwise one cannot comprehend
what is actually happening.
You
can also feel the link between the pictorial element that the
child's soul had been living within, as well as the newly
emerging ensouled habit, the actual memory, which works
mainly through images as well.
Everything depends, in all these matters, on keen observation
of human nature. It will open one's eyes to the incisive
turning point during the change of teeth. One can see this
change especially clearly by observing pathological conditions
in children. Anyone who has an eye for these things knows that
children's diseases look very different from adult diseases. As
a rule, even the same outer symptoms in an ill child have a
different origin than those in an adult, where they may appear
similar, but are not necessarily the same. In children the
characteristic forms of illness all stem from the head, from
which they affect the remaining organism. They are caused by a
kind of overstimulation of the nerve-sense system. This is true
even in cases of children who have measles or scarlet
fever.
If
one can observe clearly, it will be found that when walking,
speaking, and thinking exert their separate influences, these
activities also work from the head downward. At the change of
teeth, the head has been the most perfectly molded and shaped
inwardly. After this, it spreads inner forces to the remaining
organism. This is why children's diseases radiate downward from
the head. Because of the way these illnesses manifest, one will
come to see that they are a reaction to conditions of
irritation or overstimulation, particularly in the nervesense
system. Only by realizing this will one find the correct
pathology in children's illnesses. If you look at the adult you
will see that illnesses radiate mainly from the abdominal-motor
system — that is, from the opposite pole of the human
being.
Between the age when the child is likely to suffer from an
overstimulation of the nerve-sense system and in the years
following sexual maturity — that is, between the change
of teeth and puberty — are the years of compulsory
schooling. And amid all of this, a kinship lives between the
child's soul life and the pictorial realm, as I have described
it to you. Outwardly, this is represented by the rhythmic
system with its interweaving of breathing and blood
circulation. The way that breathing and blood circulation
become inwardly harmonized, the way that the child breathes at
school, and the way that the breathing gradually adapts to the
blood circulation, all of this generally happens between the
ninth and tenth year. At first, until the ninth year, the
child's breathing is in the head, until, through an inner
struggle within its organism, a kind of harmony between the
heartbeat and the breathing is established. This is followed by
a time when the blood circulation predominates, and this
general change occurs in the physical realm and in the realm of
the child's soul.
After the change of teeth is complete, all of the forces
working through the child are striving toward inwardly mobile
imagery, and we will support this picture-forming element if we
use a pictorial approach in whatever we bring to the child. And
then, between the ninth and tenth years, something truly
remarkable begins to occur; the child feels a greater
relationship to the musical element. The child wants to be held
by music and rhythms much more than before. We may observe how
the child, before the ninth and tenth years, responds to music
— how the musical element lives in the child as a shaping
force, and how, as a matter of course, the musical forces are
active in the inner sculpting of the physical body. Indeed, if
we notice how the child's affinity to music is easily expressed
in eagerly performed dance-like movements — then we are
bound to recognize that the child's real ability to grasp music
begins to evolve between the ninth and tenth years. It becomes
clearly noticeable at this time. Naturally, these things do not
fall into strictly separate categories, and if one can
comprehend them completely, one will also cultivate a musical
approach before the ninth year, but this will be done in the
appropriate way. One will tend in the direction suggested just
now. Otherwise the child aged nine to ten would get too great a
shock if suddenly exposed to the full force of the musical
element, if the child were gripped by musical experiences
without the appropriate preparation.
We
can see from this that the child responds to particular outer
manifestations and phenomena with definite inner demands,
through developing certain inner needs. In recognizing these
needs, knowledge does not remain theoretical, but becomes
pedagogical instinct. One begins to see how here one particular
process is in a state of germination and there another is
budding within the child. Observing children becomes
instinctive, whereas other methods lead to theories that can be
applied only externally and that remain alien to the child.
There is no need to give the child sweets to foster intimacy.
This has to be accomplished through the proper approach to the
child's soul conditions. But the most important element is the
inner bond between teacher and pupil during the classroom time.
It is the crux of the matter.
Now
it also needs to be said that any teacher who can see what
wants to overflow from within the child with deep inner
necessity will become increasingly modest, because such a
teacher will realize how difficult it is to reach the child's
being with the meager means available. Nevertheless, we shall
see that there are good reasons for continuing our efforts as
long as we proceed properly, especially since all education is
primarily a matter of self-education. We should not be
disheartened because the child at each developmental stage
reacts specifically to what the external world — that is
we, the teachers — wishes to bring, even if this may
assume the form of a certain inner opposition. Naturally, since
consciousness has not awakened sufficiently at that age, the
child is unaware of any inner resistance. In keeping with their
own nature, children, having gone through the change of teeth,
demand lesson content that has form and coloring that satisfies
what is overflowing from their organisms. I will speak more
about this later.
But
one thing that children do not want — certainly not
during the change of teeth — something they will reject
with strong inner opposition — is to have to draw on a
piece of paper, or on the chalkboard, a peculiar sign that
looks like this: A, only to be told that this is
supposed to sound the same as what would spontaneously come
from one's own mouth [Ah!] when seeing something especially
wonderful!
[In German, the letter A is pronounced
“ah” as in “father” or
“star.” — TRANS.]
For such a sign has nothing
whatever to do with the inner experience of a child. When a
child sees a combination of colors, feelings are immediately
stimulated. But if one puts something in front of a child that
looks like FATHER, expecting an association with what is known
and loved as the child's own father, then the inner being of
the child can feel only opposition.
How
have our written symbols come about? Think about the ancient
Egyptians with their hieroglyphs that still retained some
similarity to what they were intended to convey. Ancient
cuneiform writing also still had some resemblance to what the
signs signified, although these were more expressive of the
will-nature of the ancient people who used them, whereas the
Egyptian hieroglyphs expressed more of a feeling approach. The
forms of these ancient writings, especially when meant to be
read, brought to mind the likeness of what they represented
from the external world. But what would children make of such
weird and ornate signs on the chalkboard? What could they have
to do with their own fathers? And yet the young pupils are
expected to learn and work with these apparently meaningless
symbols. No wonder that something in the child becomes
resentful.
When children are losing their baby teeth, they feel least
connected with the kind of writing and reading prevalent in our
present stage of civilization, because it represents the
results of stylization and convention. Children, who have only
recently come into the world, are suddenly expected to absorb
the final results of all of the transformations that writing
and reading have gone through. Even though nothing of the many
stages of cultural progress that have evolved throughout the
ages has yet touched the children, they are suddenly expected
to deal with signs that have lost any connection between our
modern age and ancient Egypt. Is it any wonder, then, if
children feel out of touch?
On
the other hand, if you introduce children to the world of
number in an appropriate way for their age, you will find that
they can enter the new subject very well. They will also be
ready to appreciate simple geometric forms. In the first
lecture I have already noted how the child's soul prepares to
deal with patterns and forms. Numbers can also be introduced
now, since with the change of teeth a hardening of the inner
system is occurring. Through this hardening, forces are being
released and expressed outwardly in how the child works with
numbers, drawing, and so on. But reading and writing are
activities that are, initially, very alien to children at
around the seventh year. Please do not conclude from what I
have said that children should not be taught to read and write.
Of course they must learn this because, after all, we do not
educate the young for our benefit, but for life. The point is,
how should this be done without countering human nature? We
shall go into this question more thoroughly during the next few
days. But, generally speaking, it is good if educators realize
how alien many things are to a child's soul, things that we
take from contemporary life and teach because we feel it is
necessary for the children to know them.
This must not lead us into the opposite error of wanting to
create an esthetic form of education, however, or declaring
that all learning should be child's play. This is one of the
worst slogans, because such an attitude would turn children
into the kind of people who only play at life. Only dilettantes
in the field of education would allow themselves to be taken in
by such a phrase. The point is not to select certain tidbits
out of play activities that are pleasing to an adult, but to
connect with what is actually happening when a child is
playing.
And
here I must ask you a pertinent question. Is play mere fun or
is it a serious matter for children? To a healthy child,
playing is in no way just a pleasurable pastime, but a
completely serious activity. Play flows earnestly from a
child's entire organism. If your way of teaching can capture
the child's seriousness in play, you will not merely teach in a
playful way — in the ordinary sense — but you will
nurture the earnestness of a child's play. What matters at all
times is the accurate observation of life. Therefore it can be
rather regrettable if well-meaning people try to introduce
their pet ideas into the one branch of life that demands the
closest observation of all — that is, education. Our
intellectual culture has landed us in a situation where most
adults no longer have any understanding of childhood, because a
child's soul is entirely different from that of a thoroughly
intellectualized adult. We must begin by finding the key to
childhood again. This means that we must permeate ourselves
with the knowledge that, during the first period of life until
the change of teeth, the entire behavior of a child reveals a
physically anchored religious quality; and after this, between
the change of teeth and puberty, a child's soul life is attuned
to all that has a pictorial quality, and it undergoes many
artistic and esthetic changes during this period of life.
When a child has reached puberty, the astral body, which has
been working through language until this point, now becomes
free to work independently. Previously, the forces that work
through the medium of language were needed to build up the
inner organization of the child's body. But after puberty,
these forces (which work also in many other spheres — in
everything that gives form, in relation to both plastic and
musical forms) become liberated, and are used for the activity
of thinking. Only then does the child become an
intellectualizing and logically thinking person.
It
is clear that what flashes, streams, and surges through
language in this way, delivers a final jolt to the physical
body before becoming liberated. Look at a boy who is at this
age and listen to how his voice changes during puberty. This
change is just as decisive as the change of teeth in the
seventh year. When the larynx begins to speak with a different
vocal undertone, it is the astral body's last thrust —
that is, the forces flashing and working through speech —
in the physical body. A corresponding change also occurs in the
female organism, but in a different way, not in the larynx. It
is brought about through other organs. Having gone through
these changes, the human being has become sexually mature.
And
now the young person enters that period of life when what
previously radiated into the body from the nerve-sense system
is no longer the determining factor. Now it is the motor
system, the will system — so intimately connected with
the metabolic system — that takes the leading role. The
metabolism lives in physical movements. Pathology in adults can
show us how, at this later age, illnesses radiate mainly from
the metabolic system. (Even migraine is a metabolic illness.)
We can see how in adults illnesses no longer spread from the
head, as they do in children. It does not matter so much where
an illness manifests, what matters is to know from where it
radiates into the body.
But
during grade school (from about six to fourteen) the rhythmic
system is the most actively engaged. During this time,
everything living within the nerve-sense system on the one
hand, and within the metabolic-limb system on the other, is
balanced by the rhythmic system. This balancing activity of the
rhythmic system encompasses what works through our physical
movement, where processes of combustion continually occur, and
are also balanced by the metabolism. This balancing activity
also works in the metabolism's digestion of what will
eventually enter the bloodstream and take the form of
circulation. This all comes together in the breathing process,
which has a rhythmical nature, in order to work back again
finally into the nerve-sense process. These are the two
polarities in human nature. The nerve-sense system on the one
hand, the metabolic-limb system on the other, with the rhythmic
system in between.
We
have to consider this rhythmic system above all when dealing
with children between the change of teeth and puberty. It is
fully expressed during these years, and it is the healthiest of
the human systems; it would have to be subjected to gross
external interference to become ill.
In
this respect, modern methods of observation again take the
wrong course. Think of the recent scientific tests that study
fatigue in children by means of fatigue coefficients. Let me
repeat again at this point, to avoid misunderstandings, that I
have no intention of running down modern methods of scientific
investigation as such, nor of heaping scorn on its methods. In
these experiments various degrees of fatigue are measured, for
example, in gym or arithmetic classes, and so on. There is
nothing wrong in discovering such factors, but they must not
form the basis of one's teaching. One cannot arrange a
timetable according to these coefficients because the real task
of a teacher is very different. At this stage of childhood, the
aim should be to work with the one system in the human being
that never tires throughout a person's whole life. The only
system prone to fatigue is the metabolic and limb system. This
system does tire, and it passes its fatigue to the other
systems. But I ask you, is it possible for the rhythmic system
to tire? No, it must never tire, because if the heart were not
tirelessly beating throughout life, without suffering fatigue,
and if breathing were not continuous without becoming
exhausted, we simply could not live. The rhythmic system does
not tire.
If
we tire our pupils too much through one or another activity, it
shows that, during the age under consideration — between
seven and fourteen years — we have not appealed strongly
enough to the rhythmic system. This middle system again lives
entirely in the pictorial realm and is an outer expression of
it. If you fail to present arithmetic or writing lessons
imaginatively, you will tire your pupils. But if, out of an
inner freshness and at a moment's notice, you can call up
powers of imagery in the children, you will not tire them. If
they nevertheless begin to droop, the source of their fatigue
is in their motor system. For example, the chair that a child
sits on might be pressing too hard, or the pen may not fit the
hand properly. There is no need to calculate through
pedagogical psychology how long a child can engage in
arithmetic without undue strain. The important thing is that
the teacher knows how to teach the various subjects in harmony
with the pupils rhythmic system, and how, through knowledge of
the human being, the lesson content can be presented in the
appropriate form.
This can become possible only when we recognize that the pupil
awakens to the intellectual side of life only with the advent
of sexual maturity, and that between the change of teeth and
puberty the teachers have to guide through personal example as
they bring to their pupils what they wish to unfold within
them. Consequently, a pedagogy that springs from a true
knowledge of the human being has to be largely a matter of the
teachers' own inner attitudes — a pedagogy destined to
work on the teachers' own moral attitudes. A more drastic
expression of this would be: The children in themselves are all
right, but the adults are not! What is needed above all has
already been put into words at the end of the first lecture.
Instead of talking about how we should treat children, we
should strive toward a knowledge of how we, as teachers and
educators, ought to conduct ourselves. In our work we need
forces of the heart. Yet it is not good enough to simply
declare that, instead of addressing ourselves to the intellect
of our pupils we now must appeal to their hearts, in both
principle and method. What we really need — and this I
wish to emphasize once more — is that we ourselves have
our hearts in our pedagogy.
|