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 Five
DORNACH, APRIL 19, 1923
Between the ages of seven and approximately fourteen,
the teacher's main concern must be directed toward the
students' evolving life of feeling. It is really very important
that educators acquire the ability to create the kind of mental
imagery that can guide pupils through the tender transitional
stages characteristic of this period.
When children enter school, remnants of the previous
“bodily-religious mood,” as I call it, still exist.
There is still a longing in children to absorb through the
senses everything happening in their surroundings; this
perceiving, which is transformed into imitation, then connects
with listening for what comes from the natural authority of the
teacher. Truth, at this stage, is not based on the child's
judgment, but comes in the guise of what the naturally revered
authority of the teacher says. Similarly, what is considered
false simply agrees with what this freely accepted authority
considers false. This also applies to what is seen as beautiful
or ugly, good or evil. Children can only develop the faculty of
independent judgment in adulthood if they have gone through the
experience of looking up to the voice of authority with
uncritical veneration. Of course I am not referring to any kind
of enforced authority here; the authority I am speaking of must
never be imposed externally. And if, in some cases, an
authoritarian approach is necessary for the sake of general
society, the child should not be aware of it. The child must
always feel secure in looking up with total confidence to the
teacher's authority or that of another adult in charge.
Everything has to be supported by this tender relationship to
authority from the day the child enters the first grade until
the ninth year, and especially during the seventh to ninth
years. This relationship should be preserved even longer, but
between the ninth and tenth years it will necessarily change
somewhat.
Within this same context we must now look at another point.
During the initial period of life — that is, from birth
until the change of teeth — the child lives like one
great multifaceted sense organ, but as a sense organ where will
forces were working in every moment of life. For me to use the
expression “a sense organ where will forces are
working,” may sound strange, but this is only because of
the complete inadequacy of what we are told by contemporary
physiology and the popular ideas derived from it. Today one
does not associate will forces with the function of the human
eye, for example. Nevertheless, even in the eye, the perceived
image is due to will activity. The same is true of the
functioning of every other sense organ: will-substance is
instrumental in creating the inner sense impressions. The task
of a sense organ, first of all, is to expose itself, or the
human being, passively to the external world's influences. But
within every sense organ an inner activity also occurs that has
a will nature.
This will element works very intensively throughout the child's
whole body until the change of teeth. It also remains active
after this event, with the result that, between entering school
and the ninth year, this predominant will element in the child
will tolerate only an approach to external nature and to the
human being that is entirely human and pictorial. This is why
we introduce not aesthetics but a thoroughly artistic element,
especially in the younger classes. We do this by allowing
children to use liquid colors from the very beginning, even if
this practice is likely to cause rather uncomfortable
consequences in the classroom. We let children handle colors
because, by putting them on paper next to one another —
not according to preconceived notions, but simply from an
instinctive sense of color; and through the ensuing inner
satisfaction, they work in harmony with their own formative
forces. When given this opportunity, children reveal a
wonderful instinct for painting artistic color combinations,
and these soon show the teacher how to direct children's
efforts toward drawing with colored pencils from which writing
can eventually evolve.
But
one thing children at this age cannot do is follow
explanations; they have no understanding for this at all. If a
teacher tries to explain the subjects during the first school
years, the children will react by becoming blunted and dull.
This approach simply does not work. On the other hand,
everything will go smoothly if, rather than explaining the
subject matter, one forms the content into a story, if words
are painted with mental images, and if rhythm is brought into
one's whole way of teaching. If the teachers' relationship to
music is not restricted to music in a narrow sense, but if they
can introduce a musical element into their teaching — if
their lessons are permeated by beat, rhythm, and other less
obvious musical qualities — then children will respond
spontaneously and with acute understanding. On the other hand,
if the teachers who introduce the world by appealing to feeling
in their students were to speak now of the human being as a
separate entity, the children would feel inwardly resentful.
They would reject it; indeed, they could simply not bear it.
What children really want during this stage is for everything
they learn about — even if it is part of inorganic nature
— to be presented in living, human terms.
The
inner horror (I think one can put it that strongly) of facing a
description of the human being remains with the child until
about the twelfth year. From the ninth to the twelfth year we
can use what I described yesterday as the content for the
lessons. As long as we present it imaginatively we can speak
about the plant world in terms of hair growing out of the
Earth, and we can introduce animal study by showing how in
every animal form we can see a part of the human organism, but
specialized in a one-sided way. At this stage, however, we must
not study the human being directly as an object, because
children are not yet ready for this. Only toward the twelfth
year do they experience a dim longing to gather together the
entire animal kingdom in order to discover synthesis of the
animal world in the human being. This can form the new content
for the classes, then, following the eleventh and twelfth
years.
For
you to be told that teachers should relate parts of the human
organization to certain animal forms before their pupils have
reached the necessary maturity to study the human being as a
separate entity may sound contradictory, but life is full of
such apparent contradictions. It is correct, nevertheless, to
proceed in this way until the great moment comes when teachers
can show their students how what is concentrated within one
single human individual, is spread out over all of the animal
kingdom. To allow children to experience very intensely such
decisive moments in life is tremendously important in teaching;
and one of these moments is the realization, passing through
the child's soul, that the human being as seen physically is
both the extract and the synthesis of the entire animal world,
but on a higher level. The inner experience of such a climb
over a childhood peak — if I may use this comparison
— is more important than acquiring knowledge step by
step. It will have a beneficial effect for the rest of the
child's life. But because of the way our times have developed
in an external scientific direction, there is little
inclination to look so intimately at human nature. Otherwise
things would not happen as they do in our civilization,
especially in modern spiritual life. You only need to consider
what I emphasized in our first meeting.
Until the seventh year, soul forces are working in all of the
child's physical processes, concluding to a certain extent
during the change of teeth. I have compared this with a
solution that forms a sediment at the bottom of a container.
The precipitate represents the denser parts, while a more
refined solution remains above it. The two substances have
separated from each other. Similarly, until the change of
teeth, we can look at the child's physical and etheric bodies
as still forming a homogeneous solution until the physical is
precipitated, leaving the etheric free to work
independently.
But
now too much soul substance might be retained by the physical
body. Part of the soul substance must always remain behind,
because the human physical body must be permeated by soul and
spirit throughout life. But too much soul and spiritual
substance could be retained so that too little of it remains in
the upper region. The result is a human being whose physical
body is over-saturated with soul substance and whose soul and
spiritual counterpart has become too insubstantial. This
condition is met far too frequently, and with the necessary
insight one can see it clearly in children between seven and
fourteen. But in order to see this, one must be able to
distinguish exactly between the coarser and the more refined
components of our human organization.
It
is essential today that our society develops a physiology
backed by a strong enough psychology and a psychology that is
not abstract, but supported by the necessary background of
physiology. In other words, one has to be able to recognize the
interrelationship between body and soul; otherwise an
amateurish physiology and an equally amateurish psychology will
result. Because of this lack of ability to see clearly through
the human being, contemporary scientific life has produced two
such dilettante branches of science. The reciprocal effect
between them has resulted in “dilettantism
squared,” or as it is also called, psychoanalysis.
Just as a number multiplied by itself is that same number
squared, so also a dilettante physiology, when multiplied by
dilettante psychology, equals psychoanalysis. This is the
secret behind the origin of psychoanalysis. I am not saying
this to cast aspersions on psychoanalysis. Things could hardly
have been otherwise because, due to our present day scientific
climate, society lives in a time when psychology has become too
diluted and physiology too dense. Seen in this light,
physiology, rather than becoming a genuine branch of science,
assumes the role of the precipitate from what should have
remained as a homogeneous solution. This is only a picture, but
I hope that you understand it.
We
cannot avoid the need to be clear about how the growing human
being develops, and about how we have to give appropriate
attention to each particular stage in the life of children.
Thus, we find that between the ninth and twelfth years children
are receptive to whatever comes to them as pictures. Until
about the ninth year they want to participate in the formation
of the picture — they will not yet play the role of
spectators. During this time teachers have to work with their
students in such a living way that their joint efforts, in and
of themselves, already have a pictorial quality. It doesn't
matter whether actual picture-making is involved, such as
painting, drawing, or similar activities; all of the work, the
lessons themselves, must form a picture. And then, between the
ninth and tenth years, the children develop a new sense for a
more external presentation of the pictorial element, and this
is when we may appropriately introduce botany and animal study.
Those two subjects in particular must be presented pictorially
and imaginatively; and the more one can do this, the better one
is as a teacher for children between nine and twelve — in
contrast to what one finds in the usual textbooks on botany,
where a great lack of imagery is displayed. Portraying the
plant world in its many forms with true imagination is very
rewarding, because to achieve this requires that one be
“co-creative.”
This sharing in the world's creativity is just the thing our
present culture awaits. People in the middle of life come to
me, again and again, full of despair because they cannot
comprehend anything pictorially. This shortcoming can be traced
back to childhood when their needs were not adequately met.
It
is much too easy for the world to laugh when we say that the
human being consists of a physical body, etheric body, astral
body, and I-being. As long as one merely evaluates these
matters with the yardstick of ordinary science, one cannot help
but laugh. This is very understandable. But considering the
serious tangle of our civilization, one would expect at least
some willingness to look for what cannot be found elsewhere.
There are many instances of apparent conundrums. Of course, it
is easy enough to denigrate the following description of the
human being: The physical body is born at birth. It develops
through body-bound religiosity, by imitation, until the change
of teeth. During these early years the etheric body and all the
other forces are fully engaged in working on the child's
physical body; they are soul and spiritual forces working in
the child. The astral body is born only at puberty, and gains
its independent existence from that time on. And as far as the
human I is concerned — this is something that can be
spoken of with certain reservations only — the I is fully
born only after the twentieth year of life. Although it may be
wisest to remain silent about this last point when talking to
young people engaged in their first years of academic study, it
is nevertheless an unalterable fact.
If
one does not know the characteristic differences between the
four members of the human being, one is likely to look at these
differentiations as being nonsense — or at least,
something highly superfluous. This changes, however, as soon as
one knows about the whole human being. You see, if we look at
physical matter we find that its main characteristic is its
exertion of a certain pressure. I could equally say that it
occupies space. It presses on other matter, pushing it. It also
presses on our body, and we experience this pressure through
the sense of touch. Physical matter exerts pressure.
The
nature of the etheric has a quality all its own. During the
last forty or fifty years natural science has seen the etheric
as a rather peculiar phenomenon. If one were to speak about all
the theories formulated concerning the essence of the etheric,
one would be kept busy for a long time. This has already
reached the degree that many people assert that the etheric is
essentially the same as the principles of mathematics and
mechanics that work in space, existing merely as some kind of
linear force. To many investigating minds, the essence of the
etheric is not much more than differential quotients flying
around in space, or at least something that is mathematically
calculable.
As
you can see, much hard thinking has delved into the question of
what the etheric is, and this in itself is admirable enough.
However, as long as one continues along these lines, nothing of
real significance will be discovered about the etheric. One has
to know that the etheric has the characteristic of being the
polar opposite of pressure; it has the effect of suction. It
always has the tendency to expedite physical matter out of
space, to annihilate it. This is the characteristic feature of
the etheric. Physical matter fills up space, and the etheric
gets rid of space-occupying matter. It could be called
negative matter, but in a qualitative sense and not from
a quantitative perspective.
This applies also to the human etheric body. Our relationship
to the physical and etheric bodies consists of our constantly
destroying and renewing ourselves. The etheric continually
destroys material substance, and the physical body builds it up
again. This statement contradicts the law of conservation of
energy, which is generally accepted today. I am mentioning this
only in passing, but it is a fact, nevertheless, that this law
of conservation of energy is not compatible with the inner
nature of the human being, and that it contradicts the truth.
Strictly speaking, this law applies only to the inorganic
realm. Within the organic world it is only true of the iron
particles in the blood serum, but not concerning the whole
human being, in whom a constant oscillation occurs between the
suction process of the etheric, whose forces destroy matter,
and the restoration affected by the physical body.
The
astral body not only draws in space but — strange as it
sounds — it draws in time! It has the quality of leading
backward in time. This will be clearer to us if we consider an
older person's life. Imagine that you were, let's say, fifty
years old. In your astral body, forces are always at work,
leading you back to earlier times in your life, taking you back
to times before puberty. Fifty-year-olds do not experience
their present age in their astral body, but actually experience
themselves as eleven, twelve, thirteen, or fourteen again.
These past ages radiate back to them through the
backward-leading activity of their astral bodies. This is the
secret of life. In reality we grow older only with regard to
the physical body, and with the etheric body and its
oscillations. The astral body, however, leads us back again and
again to previous stages of life. Regarding the astral body we
are all still “adult children.” If we imagine the
course of our lives expressed symbolically in the form of a
tube, and if we have reached a certain point, say aged fifty,
then our adult childhood shines right into our fifties, because
the astral body always takes us back in time.
In
the astral body, one always lives backward, but this
retrospective life naturally begins only with the advent of
puberty. If one can earnestly accept this in all earnestness,
then one will appreciate its implications for education, and
will give students something that will serve their later lives.
Whatever one decides to do with them would then be seen in the
context of their entire lives, even if they live to the age of
ninety! This awareness will endow teachers with an appropriate
sense of responsibility. It is this feeling of responsibility,
arising from the knowledge of what one is really doing, that
truly matters. However, this awareness can be developed only if
teachers learn to recognize the hidden interconnections that
affect human life. And if this happens, teachers will not
assert that children should be taught only what they can
comprehend fully. Such an attitude is truly appalling if one
considers the true nature of the human being; pedagogical
textbooks and handbooks written from the perspective of
concrete demonstrations can lead one to despair. There the aim
is always to come down to the level of the children's present
stage of development and to treat everything so that they will
see through them in every detail. This method deprives children
of immensely important values for life, as anyone can see who
recognizes how childhood is related to human life as a
whole.
Let's take the example of a child who, at the age of eight, has
accepted something that could not yet be comprehended, accepted
something simply on the strength of a love and respect for the
teacher, simply because whatever the teacher says must be right
and good. Here, love for the teacher — or sympathy
— was the vehicle for inner acceptance; the child may not
understand the matter fully until sometime around the age of
thirty-five. It is not easy to speak about such things to
modern people, because they tend to disagree with the idea that
sufficient maturity is gained only in the thirty-fifth year of
life for understanding certain matters. It is nevertheless the
truth, however, that only in the thirty-fifth year is one
mature enough to understand certain things, things that one
accepted as a child out of love for a teacher. Again, at this
age one has experiences that result from the astral body's
regressive forces. Something arises from within, a kind of a
mirror reflection that, in reality, is a return to the days of
childhood. It is like the arising of an inner vision. One is
thirty-five years old, has become mature, and from the depths
of one's soul there comes the realization: Only now do I
understand what I accepted on trust when I was eight.
This ability to understand something that, permeated with love,
has thus lived in one's being for many years, has a
tremendously revitalizing effect on one's life. We can give
this potential force of rejuvenation to children by
safeguarding their inborn feeling for authority — so that
such feeling can become a vehicle for love and sympathy —
and also by giving children what they cannot yet fully
comprehend, but will gradually ripen during the coming years of
life. Such interconnections are not recognized by teachers who
bring to their classes only what lies within their pupils'
present capacity to understand. On the other hand, the opposite
view is equally wrong and out of place. A teacher who knows
human nature would never tell a child, “You cannot yet
understand this.” One must never resort to such a remark,
because one can always clothe what one has to say in an
appropriate garment if the necessary rapport has been
established with the students.
If
the pedagogy we are speaking of here becomes instinctive, one
will know just what to say at the right moment. Above all, one
will avoid sharply defined or rigid concepts. It is really
appalling when a teacher's ideas and concepts have been worked
out to the degree that they are no longer adaptable or
flexible. They would have an effect similar to the effect of
iron gloves forced onto a child's little hands, preventing them
from growing naturally. We must not chain children's minds to
finished concepts, but give them concepts that can grow and
expand further. We must give them living concepts that can be
transformed. But this can be achieved only through an
imaginative approach in every subject, certainly until the
twelfth year; then the method of teaching I have thus far
sketched for you will encourage you to use language creatively,
to draw helpful drawings on the blackboard or to take up a
paintbrush to make colorful illustrations of what you want to
communicate. But there must always be an awareness that
everything a teacher brings has to be inwardly mobile and
capable of remaining so; for one must recognize that, with the
approach of the twelfth year (actually very close to the
twelfth year), something new begins to develop, and that is the
sense for cause and effect.
Before the approach of the twelfth year, the concept of
causality does not exist in the minds of children. They have an
eye for what is mobile. They can apprehend ideas that are
flexible, and they can perceive what comes in the form of
pictures or music; anything connected with causality, however,
makes no sense to them until about the twelfth year.
Consequently, this concept must be avoided at all costs until
this time, and then we may consider a newly emerging
understanding for the relationship between cause and effect.
Only at that time do children begin to have their own thoughts
about various things. Previously they saw the world in
pictures; but now something begins to dawn that will light up
only at puberty — that is, the life of thinking and the
ability to form judgments, which is closely connected with
thinking.
Between the change of teeth and puberty, children live
primarily in the realm of feeling; before the change of teeth,
they live in the region of the will, which, while still far
removed from the sphere of thinking, is intimately connected
with the fact that children imitate their surroundings. But
what enters the child's being physically at that time also
contains moral and spiritual forces, which became firmly
established in the child's organism. This is why, during the
tenth and eleventh years (and in most cases until the beginning
of the twelfth year) it is impossible to communicate knowledge
that demands an understanding of causality. Consequently, one
should not introduce students to the mineral kingdom until
around the twelfth year. Also, concepts connected with physics
should not be explored before that age, although these have to
be prepared for earlier through imagery that bypasses
causality. Anything relating to cause and effect in the
inorganic world can be grasped by children only around the
twelfth year. This is one side of the problem.
We
meet the other side when teaching history. Around the twelfth
year it is impossible to awaken in students an understanding of
the complex fabric of historical interconnections. Until that
age it is wise for teachers to present graphic descriptions of
historical personages whose actions, due to their goodness,
truth, and other qualities of greatness, will stimulate
sympathy or, in the case of negative qualities, antipathy in
the souls of children. At this stage, historical content should
appeal, above all, to the students' feelings. This can be
accomplished by a wise selection of historical personalities
and events; these should, in themselves, present a complete
story, which should nevertheless remain flexible in the
students' minds (in the sense mentioned). Causal links between
earlier and later historical events can be taught meaningfully
only at the dawn of the regressive forces of the astral body;
these forces come increasingly into their own after the
fourteenth year. At about the twelfth year, children enter this
reverse stream, and this is the time when one can begin to
appeal to a sense of causality in history as well.
When this is done earlier (and closely connected with the
concept of cause and effect is the formation of judgments) one
puts something into motion that can become very damaging in
later life. At first there is only the child's etheric body.
Toward the twelfth year, the astral body slowly begins its
process of birth, which is completed at puberty. But the
etheric body was already fully developed before that. If you
ask students to make judgments (which always have a yes
or no quality), or if you have them remember
prefabricated concepts, these will enter the etheric body
instead of the still unborn astral body. But what else does the
astral body carry? As you may conclude from the facts of sexual
maturity, the astral body also carries human love. Love is, of
course, already active in children before puberty, but it has
not yet reached an independent existence, has not yet been born
fully. Thus, critical judgments, with their attendant yes-or-no
qualities, are instilled in the child's etheric body instead of
in the astral body. On the other hand, when made at the right
time, the astral body's power of love and benevolence becomes
an integral part in forming judgments or criticisms. If you
make the mistake of forcing children to form critical judgments
— of making them decide between yes and no
— too early, then you fill their etheric bodies with
immature judgments. But the ether body is not benevolent. It
draws in whatever is in its way. Indeed, in this context, it is
even malicious; it has a destructive effect. And this is what
you do to children when you ask them to decide yes-or-no
judgments prematurely, because a yes-or-no judgment is always
behind the concept of causality.
On
the other hand, a historical process that is complete in
itself, or historical characters who are vividly described, can
simply be looked at in the way one looks at pictures. As soon
as one links later historical periods to earlier ones, however,
one has to make judgments, one has to reject or accept, and
this choice always contains an element of yes or no. The final
outcome of such premature judgment in children under the age of
fourteen is an inner resentment toward judgments that are
generally accepted by society. If the power of judging is
developed too early, the judgments of others are received with
a latent destructive force rather than with benevolence. These
things demonstrate the importance of doing the right thing at
the right time.
Keeping this in mind, let us again compare the animal with the
human being. When looking at the animal's outer appearance, its
form indicates everything it does. We can also observe the
animal's behavior. But in the case of the human being, we have
to look for inner causes. Since children are only mature enough
to look for causes in the twelfth year, this is the proper time
to present the animal world as a “spread-out human
being,” or the human being as the synthesis of the entire
animal kingdom. This is an instance where the teacher is asked
to affect an experience in the child that satisfies an inner
demand and readiness at this particular stage.
But
now you have to acknowledge that this marks a powerful reversal
in the child's nature between the change of teeth and puberty.
In a certain sense, the child's soul now proceeds entirely from
within outward. Recall that, until the twelfth year, children
could not stand listening to a description of the human being,
and now they are beginning to look at themselves as mirrors of
the world — and they do this conceptually, in the
form of ideas. This new readiness for a portrayal of the human
being — that is, a portrayal of themselves — really
does represent a complete about-face of children's nature
between the second dentition and puberty.
During this same time — roughly between the ninth and
tenth years — another very important transition occurs in
the child's life. Individually, this change can vary; in some
children it doesn't happen until after the tenth year. Each
child, instinctively, unconsciously, faces a kind of riddle of
life. This change of direction from within outward, this new
awareness of being a self surrounded by an external world
— whereas previously these two aspects were woven
together — is something the child does not experience
consciously, but through inner doubts and restlessness, which
make themselves felt at that time. Physically, the breathing
becomes properly integrated into the blood circulation, as the
two processes begin to harmonize and balance each other. The
relationship between the pulse and breathing is established.
This is the physical aspect. The soul and spiritual counterpart
is a new kind of dependence of the child on help from teachers
or educators. This appeal for help is not necessarily expressed
by direct questions, but in a characteristic form of
behavior.
And
now the teacher is called on to develop the skill necessary to
correctly weigh this great, but unspoken, life question that
lives in every student, although differently in each
individual. What is this great life question? Up to this point,
the child's natural sense of authority resulted from the image
of the teacher as representative and mediator for the whole
world. For the child, the stars moved because the teacher knew
the stars' movement. Things were good or evil, beautiful or
ugly, and true or false because this was the teacher's
assessment. Everything that came from the world had to find the
child through the teacher, and this represented the only
healthy relationship between teacher and child.
Now
however, between the ninth and the tenth years —
sometimes a little later — a question arises within the
child's soul, not as a concept or idea, but as a feeling.
“From where does my teacher receive all this
knowledge?” At this moment the teacher begins to become
transparent to the student, if I may say it pictorially. The
child wants to see the world as living behind the teacher, who
must not fail now to confirm the student's heartfelt conviction
that the teacher is properly attuned to the world, and embodies
truth, beauty, and goodness. At this stage, the unconscious
nature of children tests the teacher as never before. They want
to discover whether the teacher is truly worthy of representing
the entire world.
Again, all this has to remain unspoken. If a teacher were ever
to mention or allude to it, through explanations or in other
ways, this would appear only as a sign of weakness to the
child, whose present state of consciousness has not yet
developed a sense of causality; anything that requires proof
only shows weakness and inner uncertainty. It is unnecessary to
prove what is experienced powerfully in the soul.
This is also true concerning the history of our civilization. I
do not want to go into details now, but merely give you a
dynamic impression; until a particular time during the Middle
Ages, people knew the meaning of the Last Supper. For them
there was no need for proof. Then the situation suddenly
changed. When seen in the proper light, this just shows that a
real understanding of this event no longer existed. If someone
is caught red-handed, no one would have to prove that such
person is a thief. But if a thief escapes unseen, then proof
must be found before that person can be properly called a
thief. Proof is always demanded in cases of uncertainty, but
not for what the facts of life tell us directly. This is why it
is so ludicrous whenever people try to find the inner
connection between formal logic and reality. This is somewhat
like looking for the inner connection between a path leading to
a mountain, and the mountain itself; the path is there to allow
the wanderer to reach the mountain, and then the mountain
itself begins. Logic is there only for the sake of reaching
reality, and reality begins where logic ends.
Awareness of these things is of fundamental importance. One
must not make the mistake of wanting to prove to students, when
they are going through this important stage in life, that the
world is being truthfully interpreted for them. When adjusting
to this new situation in the classroom, one has to bring about
in the pupils an unreasoned conviction that the teacher knows
even more than they had previously imagined. The proper
relationship between teacher and students can be established
once again, perhaps while surprising the children with an
amiable off-hand remark about something new and unexpected,
which will make them sit up and listen; this can now happen if
students feel that, until now, their teacher has not yet shown
his or her true courage at all, and can truly reach unexpected
heights. One has to save some things for just such moments, so
that the teacher's image will continue to command respect. The
solution to an important question of life lies within the
students' feeling that their teacher can grow beyond even the
boundaries of the personality. Here also are the comfort and
strength one must give to children at this stage, so that one
does not disappoint the hopeful expectations with which they
come. Inwardly, such children were longing for reassurance from
the one person for whom they had already developed sympathy and
love. If this critical moment goes unnoticed, teachers will
have to go through the bitter experience of losing their
authority and hold over students around the ages of nine to
ten. They may well feel tempted, therefore, to prove everything
they do, and this dreadful mistake will only make matters
worse.
When this view of education has become second nature, one will
also find other helpful guidelines. But whatever is presented
in class has to cohere; it has to fit together. I have already
told you that we allow our young children paint quite freely
and naturally, out of their own formative forces — at
first not with colored pencils but with liquid colors. Through
this, one soon realizes how much children live within the world
of colors. After a while, the young student will come gradually
to experience something distant — something that draws us
away into far distances — as blue. It goes without saying
that the teacher must have experienced this quality of blue as
well. Yellow and red seem to move toward the beholder. Children
can already experience this in a very concrete way during the
seventh or eighth year, unless they have been plagued with
fixed tasks in drawing or painting. Of course, if you force
children to copy houses or trees representationally, this color
experience will soon be lost. But if one guides children so
they can feel: Wherever I move my hand, there the color follows
— then the type of material used is of secondary
importance. Or: The color really begins to live under my
fingers — it wants to spread a little further. Whenever
such feelings can be drawn out in children's souls, one enables
them to discover something fundamental and significant —
that is, color perspective. A child will feel that the
reddening yellow comes towards us, and that mauve-blue takes us
further away. This is how one can livingly prepare the ground
for something that must be introduced at a later stage —
linear perspective; it is very harmful to teach this
subject before students have had an intensive experience of
color perspective. To teach them quantitative
perspective without their first having inwardly absorbed
qualitative perspective — which is inherent in the
experience of color — has the thoroughly harmful effect
of making them superficial.
But
there are even further implications. If you prevent children
from having an intensive experience of color perspective, they
will not develop the necessary incentive while learning to read
(always remembering the reservation expressed yesterday, that
it is unnecessary to push a child into reading at the earliest
possible time). These color experiences will stimulate mobility
in the child's mental imagery, suppleness in feelings, and
flexibility in the will activities. The child's entire soul
life will become more sensitive and pliable. It may well be
that, if you use the method of painting-drawing and
drawing-painting, the child will not learn to read as quickly.
But when the right time comes, reading will not be anchored too
loosely, which can happen, nor too tightly, as if each letter
were making a kind of a scratch upon the tender soul-substance
of the child.
The
important thing is that whatever is comprehended through soul
and spiritual faculties should find its proper realm within the
human being. We should never ask: What is the point of teaching
the child to paint, if it will never be used in later life?
This represents an entirely superficial view of life because,
in reality, a child has every need for just this activity; if
one wants to understand the complexity of a child's needs, one
just has to know something about the spiritual background of
the human being. Just as the expression “You can't
understand this” should never be used when talking to
children, so also there should never be a skeptical attitude
among adults concerning what a child needs or does not need.
These needs should be recognized as flowing from the human
constitution itself; and if they are, one will respond with the
right instinct. One will not worry unduly, either, if a child
forgets some of what has already been learned, because
knowledge is transmuted into capacities, and these are truly
important later in life. Such capacities will not develop if
you overload a child with knowledge. It is essential to realize
— and actually practice — that one should impress
in the student's memory only what is demanded by social life,
that there is no purpose in overburdening the student's
memory.
This brings us to the question concerning the relationship
between the individual and society, national or ethnic
background, and humanity as a whole. When addressing this
problem, we must try to avoid harming human nature when
blending external demands with our educational practice.
A question is asked regarding music lessons given to a
seventeen-year-old girl.
RUDOLF STEINER: The essential thing is
what Mister Baumann has already presented to us.
[Paul Baumann (1887–1964) music
teacher at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany.] With the
beginning of puberty and during the following years, a certain
musical judgment takes the place of a previous feeling for
music and of a general musical experience. The faculty of
forming musical judgments emerges. This becomes very noticeable
through the phenomenon characterized by Mister Baumann —
that is, a certain self-observation begins to manifest, a
self-observation of the student's own singing and, with it, the
possibility of using the voice more consciously, and so on.
This has to be cultivated methodically.
At
the same time, however, something else becomes noticeable
— that is, from this stage on, natural musical memory
begins to weaken a little, with the effect that students have
to make more effort to remember music. This is something that
has to be especially remembered during music lessons. Whereas,
before puberty the children's relationship to music was
spontaneous and natural, and because of this their musical
memory was excellent, some of them now begin to encounter
difficulties — not in taking in music, but in remembering
it. This needs to be addressed. One must try to go over the
same music several times, not by immediate repetition, but
intermittently.
Another characteristic sign at this particular stage is that,
whereas previously the instrumental and vocal parts of a piece
were experienced as a unity, after the sixteenth to seventeenth
years they are listened to with clear discrimination. (From a
psychological point of view there is a fine and intimate
difference between these two ways of listening.) At this age,
musical instruments are listened to far more consciously. There
is also a greater understanding for the musical qualities of
various instruments. Whereas earlier the instrument appeared to
join in with the singing, it is now heard as a separate part.
Listening and singing become two separate, though parallel,
activities.
This new relationship between singing and the appreciation of
the part played by musical instruments is characteristic of
this new stage, and the methods of teaching must be changed
accordingly. What is important is not to introduce any music
theory before this age.
Music should be approached directly and any theoretical
observations a teacher may wish to make should come from the
students' practical experience of it. Gradually it should
become possible for pupils of this age to make the transition
toward forming musical judgments on a more rational basis.
What Mister Baumann indicated at the end of his contribution is
absolutely correct: one can make use of the ways pupils express
themselves musically to increase certain aspects of their
self-knowledge. For example, in the Waldorf school we let the
older students do some modeling, and from the very beginning
one can perceive individual characteristics in what they
produce. (When you ask children to model something or other,
their work will always display distinctly individual features.)
But with regard to musical activities, the teacher cannot go
into the pupils' more individual characteristics until the age
of sixteen or seventeen. Then, to avoid one-sidedness, it is
proper to address questions presented by too much attraction
toward a particular musical direction. If pupils of that age
develop a passion for certain types of music — for
example, if they are strongly drawn to Wagner's music (and in
our times many young people slide into becoming pure Wagnerians
almost automatically) — then the teacher must try to
counterbalance their tendency to be too emotionally swept away
by music, rather than developing an appreciation of the inner
configuration of the music itself. (This in no way implies any
criticism of Wagner's music.)
What happens in such a case is that the musical experience
slips too easily into the emotional sphere and consequently
needs to be lifted again into the realm of consciousness. A
musician will notice this even in the quality of a pupil's
singing voice. If music is experienced too much in the realm of
feeling, the voice will sound differently from that of a young
person who listens more to the formation of the tones, and who
has a correct understanding of the more structural element in
music.
To
work toward a balanced musical feeling and understanding is
particularly important at this age. Of course, the teacher, who
is still the authority, does not yet have an opportunity to
work in this way before the student reaches puberty. After
puberty, the teacher's authority no longer counts, but the
weight of the teacher's musical judgments does. Until puberty,
right or wrong is concurrent with what the teacher considers to
be right or wrong. After puberty reasons have to be given
— musical reasons also. Therefore it is very important to
go deeply into the motivation of one's own musical judgments if
there is an opportunity for continuing music lessons at this
age. The whole night could be spent talking about this theme,
if one wished to.
Question: Is there not an element of dishonesty in asking a
child a question if one knows the answer?
RUDOLF STEINER: There is something very
interesting at the
bottom of this question. Usually, if I ask a question it is
because I want to find an answer to something I don't know. If
I now question a child — knowing the answer — I
commit an untruth. However, in teaching there are always
imponderables to be reckoned with, and sometimes it becomes
necessary to become clear about this point.
To
do that, I often use the following example: If, as a teacher,
one wants to speak about the question of immortality in a
religious and imaginative way, one might choose the following
procedure, and say to oneself: Since children cannot yet
comprehend conceptual thoughts, I will use an image to convey
the idea of the soul's immortality. As the teacher, I am the
one who knows, and my students are uninformed. From my
knowledge I will create a picture for them and say, “Look
at a cocoon. When the time is right it opens, and a beautiful
butterfly flies out. And just as the butterfly flies out of the
cocoon, so the immortal soul flies out of the body when a human
being dies.” This is one way to approach the subject.
Fine; but if such is one's attitude, one may find that the
chosen image does not make a deep impression in the children at
all. This is because the teacher, with all ingenuity, does not
believe the truth of this image, which is used only to
illustrate the issue of immortality to “uninformed”
children.
But
there is another possibility as well — that the teacher
believes the truth of this picture. Then one's attitude could
be: Despite my limited knowledge and wisdom, I am aware of what
is real in the world, and I do believe the truth of this image.
I know that I did not invent it, but that it was placed in the
world through the powers that ordained the world. Through the
butterfly creeping from the cocoon, what happens when the
immortal human soul leaves the body is represented on a lower
level, but in sense-perceptible form. And I can and do believe
in this revelation.
Notice the difference: If teachers believe in the truth of
their images and the words used to describe them, their inner
attitude will communicate itself to the students. Innumerable
examples of this can be found. And so, similarly, imponderables
play into the interesting question just raised. It's not
important that, as the teacher, one has the opinion: I know my
subject, the child does not know it; now I will ask my
question, pretending that I want to hear the answer to
something I do not know. It does make a great difference, after
all, whether I ask the child a question, for example, about the
Battle of Zabern, and I know the answer but the child does not,
or whether I know the answer and the child also knows it. The
untruth would be in asking something I already know. But I
could also have a different attitude — that is, I am
interested in how the child answers the question. I may
phrase my question to find out what the child feels and thinks
about a particular point. In this case I don't know in advance
what the child will say. The child's answer could have many
different shades or nuances.
Let's assume that the teacher's ideal attitude —
something I have often emphasized in my lectures — is
that even the wisest is not beyond the capacity to learn, even
from a tiny baby. For, no matter how far one may have advanced
in scientific knowledge, a baby's cry can still teach one very
much. If this is the ideal, the way a child answers each
question will help teachers learn how to teach. If teachers ask
questions, it does not imply that they want to hear something
from their pupils that they already know, but that they
themselves want to learn from the way a child answers. They
will then also phrase their questions properly. For example,
they may formulate a question like this: What does this mean to
you? Even the tone of voice may indicate the teacher's interest
in how the child will answer.
It
is a fact that much depends on the imponderables that affect
what happens between teacher and child. If what is going on in
the child's subconscious is known, one will also discover many
other things. The whole question of untruth in the teacher is
part of this theme also — that is, what we find when
teachers stand before their classes teaching from books or
written notes. It can certainly be very convenient for them,
but such expediency has a very devastating effect on the actual
teaching. This is because, in their subconscious, the children
are continually forming the judgment: Why should we be made to
learn what even teachers do not know? Why are we made to know
what they are reading from their books? This is an even greater
untruth that enters the classroom than if teachers ask
questions. Even when dictating, teachers should avoid doing so
from books. If one perceives what is happening in the child,
and if the child can feel the teacher's genuine interest in the
pupils, and thus not asking questions with false undertones,
the whole situation is entirely different. Then teachers can
safely ask their questions without fear of introducing an
element of untruth into their lessons.
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