LECTURE VIII
READING,
WRITING AND
NATURE
STUDY
13th
August, 1923.
In the previous
lectures I have shown that when the child reaches the usual school age
(after the change of teeth) all teaching should be given in an artistic,
pictorial form. To-day, I propose to carry further the ideas already
put before you and to show how this method appeals directly to the
child's sentient life, the foundation from which all teaching must
now proceed.
Let us take a
few characteristic examples to show how writing can be derived from the
artistic element of painting and drawing. I have already said that if
a system of education is to harmonize with the natural development of
the human organism, the child must be taught to write before he
learns to read. The reason for this is that in writing the whole
being is more active than is the case in reading. You will say: Yes,
but writing entails the movement of only one particular member. That
is quite true, but fundamentally speaking, the forces of the whole
being must lend themselves to this movement. In reading only the head
and the intellect are engaged, and in a truly organic system of
education we must draw that which is to develop from the whole being
of the child.
We will assume
that we have been able to give the child some idea of flowing water; he has
learnt to form a mental picture of waves and flowing water. We now call the
child's attention to the initial sound, the initial letter of the
word ‘wave.’
We indicate
that the surface of water rising into waves follows this line:
Then we lead the
child from the drawing of this line over to the sign W derived from it.
The child is thus introduced to the form of the letter ‘W’
in writing. The W has arisen from the picture of a wave. In the first place
the child is given a mental picture which can lead over to the letter which
he then learns to write. Or we may let the child draw the form of the
mouth: —
and then we
introduce to him the first letter of the word “Mouth.” In one
of our evening talks
[Between the lectures there were meetings for discussion
and questions at which Rudolf Steiner was often present.]
I gave you another example. The child draws the form of a fish; when the
fundamental form is firmly in his mind, we pass on to the
initial letter of the word “fish.”
A great many
letters can be treated in this way; others will have to be derived somewhat
differently. Suppose, for instance, we give the child an imaginative
idea of the sound of the wind. Obviously the possibilities are many,
but this particular way is the best for very young children. We
picture to the child the raging of the wind and then we allow the
child to imitate and to arrive at this form: —
By drawing the
child's attention to definite contours, to movements, or even to actual
activities, all of which can be expressed in drawing or painting, we
can develop nearly all the consonants. In the case of the vowels we
must turn rather to gesture, for the vowels are an expression of
man's inner being. ‘A’ (ah), for example, inevitably
contains an element of wonder, of astonishment. Eurhythmy will prove
to be of great assistance here for there we have gestures that truly
correspond to feeling. The ‘I’ the ‘A’ and
all the other vowels can be drawn from the corresponding gesture in
Eurhythmy, for the vowels must be derived from movements that are an
expression of the inner life of the human soul.
In this way we
can approach the abstract nature of writing by way of the more concrete
elements contained in painting and drawing. We succeed in making the child
start from the feeling called up by a picture; he then becomes able
to relate to the actual letters the quality of soul contained in the
feeling. The principle underlying writing thus arises from the
sentient life of the soul.
When we come
to reading, our efforts must simply be in the direction of making the child
aware, and this time in his head, of what has already been elaborated
by the bodily forces as a whole. Reading is then grasped mentally,
because it is recognized in the child's mind as an activity in which
he has already been employed. This is of the very greatest
significance. The whole process of development is hindered if the
child is led straight away to what is abstract, if he is taught, that
is, from the beginning to carry out any special activity by means of
a purely mental concept. On the other hand, a healthy growth will
always ensue if the activity is first of all undertaken, and then the
mental idea afterwards unfolded as a result of the activity. Reading
is essentially a mental act. Therefore if reading is taught
before, and not after writing
the child is prematurely involved in a process of development
exclusively concerned with the head instead of with the forces of his
whole being.
By such methods
as these all instruction can be guided into a sphere that embraces the
whole man, into the realm of art. This must indeed be the aim of all our
teaching up to the age of about nine-and-a-half; picture, rhythm,
measure, these qualities must pervade all our teaching. Everything
else is premature.
It is for this
reason utterly impossible before this age to convey anything to the child
in which definite distinction is made between himself and the outer
world. The child only begins to realize himself as a being apart from
the outer world between the ninth and tenth years. Hence when he
first comes to school, we must make all outer things appear living.
We should speak of the plants as holding converse with us and with
each other in such a way that the child's outlook on Nature and man
is filled with imagination. The plants, the trees, the clouds all
speak to him, and at this age he must feel no separation between
himself and this living outer world. We must give him the feeling
that just as he himself can speak, so everything that surrounds him
also speaks.
The more we
enable the child thus to flow out into his whole environment, the more
vividly we describe plant, animal and stone, so that weaving, articulate
spirituality seems to be wafted towards him, the more adequately do
we respond to the demands of his innermost being in these early
years. They are years when the sentient life of the soul must flow
into the processes of breathing and of the circulation of the
blood and into the whole vascular system, indeed into the whole human
organism. If we educate in this sense, the child's life of feeling
will unfold itself organically and naturally in a form suited to the
requirements of our times.
It is of
incalculable benefit to the child if we develop this element of feeling
in writing and then allow a faint echo of the intellect to enter as he
re-discovers in reading what he has already experienced in writing.
This is the very best way of leading the child on towards his ninth
year.
Between the
ages of seven and nine-and-a-half, it is therefore essential that all the
teaching shall make a direct appeal to the element of feeling. The child
must learn to feel the forms of the various letters. This is very
important. We harden the child's nature unduly, we over-strengthen
the forces of bones and cartilage and sinew in relation to the rest
of the organism, if we teach him to write mechanically, making him
trace arbitrary curves and lines for the letters, making use only of
his bodily mechanism without calling upon the eye as well.
If we also call
upon the eye — and the eye is of course connected with the
movements of the hand — by developing the letters in an artistic
way, so that the letter does not spring from merely mechanical movements
of the hand, it will then have an individual character in which the eye
itself will take pleasure. Qualities of the soul are thus brought into
play and the life of feeling develops at an age when it can best flow
into the physical organism with health-giving power.
* * *
I wonder what
you would say if you were to see someone with a plate of fish in front of
him, carefully cutting away the flesh and consuming the
bones! You would certainly be afraid the bones might choke him and
that in any case he would not be able to digest them. On another
level, the level of the soul, exactly the same thing happens when we
give the child dry, abstract ideas instead of living pictures,
instead of something that engages the activities of his whole being.
These dry, abstract concepts must only be there as a kind of support
for the pictures that are to arise in the soul.
When we make
use of this imaginative, pictorial method in education in the way I have
described, we so orientate the child's nature that his concepts will
always be living and vital. We shall find that when he has passed the
age of nine or nine-and-a-half, we can lead him on to a really vital
understanding of an outer world in which he must of necessity learn
to distinguish himself from his environment.
When we have
given sufficient time to speaking of the plant world in living pictures,
we can then introduce something he can learn in the best possible way
between the ninth and tenth years, gradually carrying it further
during the eleventh and twelfth.
The child is
now ready to form ideas about the plant world. But naturally, in any system
of education aiming at the living development of the human being, the
way in which the plants are described must be very different from
such methods as are used for no other reason than that they were
usual in our own school days. To give the child a plant or flower and
then make him learn its name, the number of its stamens, the petals
and so forth, has absolutely no meaning for human life, or at most
only a conventional one.
Whatever is
taught the child in this way remains quite foreign to him. He is merely
aware of being forced to learn it, and those who teach botany to a child
of eleven or twelve in this way have no true knowledge of the real
connections of Nature. To study some particular plant by itself, to
have it in the specimen box at home for study is just as though we
were to pull out a single hair and observe it as it lay there before
us. The hair by itself is nothing; it cannot grow of itself and has
no meaning apart from the human head. Its meaning lies simply and
solely in the fact that it grows on the head of a man, or on the skin
of an animal. Only in its connections has it any living import.
Similarly, the plant only has meaning in its relation to the earth,
to the forces of the sun and, as I shall presently show, to other
forces also. In teaching children about a plant therefore, we must
always begin by showing how it is related to the earth and to the sun.
I can only make
a rough sketch here of something that can be illustrated in pictures in a
number of lessons. Here (drawing on the blackboard) is the earth; the
roots of the plant are intimately bound up with the earth and belong
to it. The chief thought to awaken in the child is that the earth and
the root belong to one another and that the blossom is drawn forth
from the plant by the rays of the sun. The child is thus led out into
the Cosmos in a living way.
If the teacher
has sufficient inner vitality it is easy to give the child at this
particular age a living conception of the plant in its cosmic
existence. To begin with, we can awaken a feeling of how the
earth-substances permeate the root; the root then tears itself away
from the earth and sends a shoot upwards; this shoot is born of the
earth and unfolds into leaf and flower by the light and warmth of the
sun. The sun draws out the blossoms and the earth retains the root.
Then we call
the child's attention to the fact that a moist earth, earth inwardly watery
in nature, works quite differently upon the root from what a dry earth
does; that the roots become shrivelled up in a dry soil and are
filled with living sap in a moist, watery earth.
Again, we
explain how the rays of the sun, falling perpendicularly to the earth,
call forth flowers of plants like yellow dandelions, buttercups and
roses. When the rays of the sun fall obliquely, we have plants like
the mauve autumn crocus, and so on. Everywhere we can point to living
connections between root and earth, between blossom and sun.
Having given
the child a mental picture of the plant in its cosmic setting, we pass on
to describe how the whole of its growth is finally concentrated in the
seed vessels from which the new plant is to grow.
Then —
and here I must to some extent anticipate the future — in a form
suited to the age of the child we must begin to disclose a truth of which
it is difficult as yet to speak openly, because modern science regards it
as pure superstition or so much fantastic mysticism. Nevertheless it
is indeed a fact that just as the sun draws the coloured blossom out
of the plant, so is it the forces of the moon which develop the
seed-vessels. Seed is brought forth by the forces of the moon. In
this way we place the plant in a living setting of the forces of the
sun, moon and earth. True, one cannot enter deeply into this working
of the moon forces, for if the children were to say at home that they
had been taught about the connection between seeds and the moon,
their parents might easily be prevailed upon by scientific friends to
remove them from such a school — even if the parents themselves
were willing to accept such things! We shall have to be somewhat
reticent on this subject and on many others too, in these
materialistic days.
By this radical
example I wished, however, to show you how necessary it is to develop
living ideas, ideas that are drawn from actual reality and not from
something that has no existence in itself. For in itself, without the
sun and the earth, the plant has no existence.
We must now
show the child something further. Here (drawing on the blackboard) is the
earth; the earth sprouts forth, as it were, produces a hillock (swelling);
this hillock is penetrated by the forces of air and sun. It remains
earth substance no longer; it changes into something that lies
between the sappy leaf and the root in the dry soil — into the
trunk of a tree. On this plant that has grown out of the earth, other
plants grow — the branches. The child thus realizes that the
trunk of the tree is really earth-substance carried upwards. This
also gives an idea of the inner kinship between the earth and all
that finally becomes earthy. In order to bring this fully home to the
child, we show him how the wood decays, becoming more and more earthy
till it finally falls into dust. In this condition the wood becomes
earth once more. Then we can explain how sand and stone have their
origin in what was once really destined for the plants, how the earth
is like one huge plant, a giant tree out of which the various plants
grow like branches.
Here we develop
an idea intelligible to the child; the whole earth as a living being of
which the plants are an integral part.
It is all
important that the child should not get into his head the false ideas
suggested by modern geology — that the earth consists merely of
mineral substances and mineral forces. For the plants belong to the earth
as much as do the minerals. And now another point of great significance.
To begin with, we avoid speaking of the mineral as such. The child is
curious about many things but we shall find that he is no longer
anxious to know what the stones are if we have conveyed to him a
living idea of the plants as an integral part of the earth, drawn
forth from the earth by the sun.
The child has
no real interest in the mineral as such. And it is very much to the good
if up to the eleventh or twelfth years he is not introduced to the dead
mineral substances but can think of the earth as a living being, as a
tree that has already crumbled to dust, from which the plants grow
like branches.
From this
point of view it is easy to pass on to the different plants. For instance,
I say to the child: The root of such and such a plant is trying to find
soil; its blossoms, remember, are drawn forth by the sun. Suppose that
some roots cannot find any soil but only decaying earth, then the result
will be that the sun cannot draw out the blossoms. Then we have a
plant with no real root in the soil and no flower — a fungus,
or mushroom-like growth. We now explain how a plant like a
fungus, having found no proper soil in the earth, is able to take
root in something partly earth, partly plant, that is, in the trunk
of a tree. Thus it becomes a tree-lichen, that greyish-green lichen
which one finds on the bark of a tree, a parasite.
From a study
of the living, weaving forces of the earth itself, we can lead on to a
characterization of all the different plants. And when the child has
been given living ideas of the growth of the plants, we can pass on
from this study of the living plant to a conception of the whole
surface of the earth.
In some regions
yellow flowers abound; in others the plants are stunted in their growth,
and in each case the face of the earth is different. Thus we reach
geography, which can play a great part in the child's development if
we lead up to it from the plants.
We should try
to give an idea of the face of the earth by connecting the forces at work
on its surface with the varied plant-life we find in the different regions.
Then we unfold a living instead of a dead intellectual faculty in the
child. The very best age for this is the time between the ninth or
tenth and the eleventh or twelfth years. If we can give the child
this conception of the weaving activity of the earth whose inner life
brings forth the different forms of the plants, we give him living
and not dead ideas, ideas which have the same characteristics as a
limb of the human body. A limb has to develop in earliest youth. If
we enclosed a hand for instance in an iron glove, it could not grow.
Yet it is constantly being said that the ideas we give to children
should be as definite as possible, they should be definitions and the
children ought always to be learning them. But nothing is more
hurtful to the child than definitions and rigid ideas, for these have
no quality of growth. Now the human being must grow as his organism
grows. The child must be given mobile concepts, concepts whose form
is constantly changing as he becomes more mature. If we have
a certain idea when we are
forty years of age, it should not be a mere repetition of something
we learnt at ten years of age. It ought to have changed its form,
just as our limbs and the whole of our organism have changed.
Living ideas
cannot be roused if we only give the child what is nowadays called
“science,” the dead knowledge which we so often find
teaches us nothing! Rather must we give the child an idea of what is
living in Nature. Then he will develop in a body which grows as
Nature herself grows. We shall not then be guilty, as educational
systems so often are, of implanting in a body engaged in a process of
natural development, elements of soul-life that are dead and
incapable of growth. We shall foster a living growing soul in harmony
with a living, growing physical organism and this alone can lead to a
true development.
This true
development can best be induced by studying the life of plants in intimate
connection with the configuration of the earth. The child should feel the
life of the earth and the life of the plants as a unity: knowledge of the
earth should be at the same time a knowledge of the world of the plants.
The child
should first of all be shown how the lifeless mineral is a residue of life,
for the tree decays and falls into dust. At the particular age of which
I am now speaking, nothing in the way of mineralogy should be taught the
child. He must first be given ideas and concepts of what is living.
That is an essential thing.
* * *
Just as the
world of the plants should be related to the earth and the child should
learn to think of it as the offspring of a living earth-organism, so
should the animal-world as a whole be related to man. The child is thus
enabled in a living way to find his own place in Nature and in
the world. He begins to understand that the plant-tapestry belongs to
the living earth. On the other hand, however, we teach him to realize
that the various animals spread over the world represent, in a
certain sense, stages of a path to the human state. That the plants
have kinship to the earth, the animals to man — this should be
the basis from which we start. I can only justify it here as a
principle; the actual details of what is taught to a child of
ten, eleven or twelve years concerning the animal world must be
worked out with true artistic feeling.
In a very
simple, very elementary way, we begin by calling the child's attention
to the nature of man. This is quite possible if the preliminary artistic
foundations have already been laid. The child will learn to
understand, in however simple a sense, that man has a threefold
organization. First, there is the head. A hard shell encloses the
system of nerves and the softer parts that lie within it. The head
may thus be compared with the round earth within the Cosmos. We shall
do our utmost to give the child a concrete, artistic understanding of
the head-system and then lead on to the second member, the rhythmic
system which includes the organs of breathing and circulation of the
blood. Having spoken of the artistic modelling of the cup-like
formation of the skull which encloses the soft parts of the brain, we
pass on to consider the series of bones in the spinal column and the
branching ribs. We shall study the characteristics of the
chest, with its breathing and circulatory systems, that is, the human
rhythmic system in its essential nature. Then we reach the third
member, the system of metabolism and limbs. As organs of movement,
the limbs really maintain and support the metabolism of the body, for
the processes of combustion are regulated by their activities. The
limbs are connected with metabolism. Limbs and metabolism must be
taken together; they constitute the third member of man's being.
To begin with,
then, we make this threefold division of man. If our teaching is pervaded
with the necessary artistic feeling and is given in the form of pictures,
it is quite possible to convey to the child this conception of man as
a threefold being.
We now draw
the child's attention to the different animal species spread over the earth.
We begin with the lowest forms of animal life, with creatures whose
inner parts are soft and are surrounded by shell-like formations.
Certain members of the lower animal species consist, strictly
speaking, merely of a sheath surrounding the protoplasm. We show the
child how these lower creatures image in a primitive way the form of
the human head.
Our head is
the lower animal raised to the very highest degree of development. The
head, and more particularly the nervous system, must not be correlated
with the mammals or the apes, but with the lowest forms of animal life.
We must go far, far back in the earth's history, to the most ancient
forms of animal life, and there we find creatures which are wholly a
kind of elementary head. Thus we try to make the lower animal world
intelligible to the child as a primitive head-organization.
We then take
the animals somewhat higher in the scale, the fishes and their allied
species. Here the spinal column is especially developed and we explain
that these “half-way” animals are beings in whom the human
rhythmic system has developed, the other members being stunted. In
the lowest animals, then, we find at an elementary stage, the
organization corresponding to the human head. In the animal species
grouped round the fishes, we find a one-sided development of the
human chest-organization, and the system comprising the limbs and
metabolism brings us finally to the higher animals.
The organs of
movement are developed in great diversity of form in the higher animals.
The mechanism of a horse's foot, a lion's pad, or the feet of the wading
animals, all these give us a golden opportunity for artistic
description. Or again, we can compare the limbs of man with the
one-sided development we find in the limbs of the ape. In short, we
begin to understand the higher animals by studying the plastic
structure of the organs of movement, or the digestive organs.
Beasts of prey
differ from the ruminants in that the latter have a very long intestinal
track, whereas in the former, while the intestinal coil is short, all that
connects the heart and blood circulation with the digestive processes
is strongly and powerfully developed. A study of the organization of
the higher animals shows at once how one-sided is its development in
comparison with the system of limbs and metabolism in man. We can
give a concrete picture of how the front part of the spine in the
animal is really nothing but head. The whole digestive system is
continued right on into the head. The animal's head belongs
essentially to the digestive organs, to the stomach and intestines.
In man, on the other hand, that which has remained, as it were, in
the virginal state — the soft parts of the brain with their
enclosing, protecting shell of bone — is placed above the
limb and metabolic system. The head organization in man is thus
raised a stage higher than in the animal, in which, as we have seen,
it is merely a continuation of the metabolism. Yet man, in so far as
his head organization is concerned, preserves the simplest, most
fundamental principles of form, namely, soft substance within
surrounded by a cup-like bony formation.
One can show
too how in certain animals the structure of the jaw can best be understood
if the upper and under jaw are regarded as the foremost limbs. This best
explains the animal head. In this way, the human being emerges as a
synthesis of three systems — head system, chest system, system
of limbs and metabolism. In the animal world there is a one-sided
development of the one or other system. Thus we have first, the
lower animals, the crustaceans, for example, but also others; then
the mammals, birds and so on, where the chest system is
predominantly developed; and finally the species of fishes,
reptiles and so on.
We see, as it
were, the animal kingdom as a human being spread out in diversity over
the earth. We relate the world of the plants to the earth, and the
diverse animal species to man who is, in fact, the synthesis of the
entire animal world. Taking our start from man's physical
organization, we give the child, in a simple way, an idea of the
threefold nature of his being. Passing to the animals, we explain how
in the different species there is always a one-sided development of
certain organs, whereas in man these organs are united into one
harmonious whole. This one-sided specialized development is
manifested by the chest organs in certain animals; in others by the
lower intestines, and in others again, by the upper organs of
digestion. In many forms of animal life, birds for instance, we find
metamorphoses of certain organs; the organs of digestion become the
crop, and so forth.
We can
characterize each animal species as representing a one-sided development
of an organic system in man, so that the whole animal world appears as
the being of man spread over the earth in diversity of forms, man himself
being the synthesis of the animal kingdom.
When it has
been made clear to the child that the animal world is the one-sided
expression of the bodily organs of man, that one system of organs comes
to expression as one species, another as a different species, then we
can pass on to study man himself. This should be when the child is
approaching his twelfth year, for he can
then understand that because man bears the spirit within him, he is
an artistic synthesis of the separate parts of his being, which are
mirrored in the various species of animals. Only because man bears
the spirit within him can he thus unite the lower forms of animal
life in a harmonious unity. The human head and chest organizations
arise as complex metamorphosis of animal forms, all of which have
evolved in such a way that they fit in with the other parts of his body.
Thus he bears
within himself that which is manifested in the fishes and that which is
manifested in the higher animals but harmonized into a limb. The
separate fragments of man's being scattered over the world in the
realm of the animals are in man gathered together by the spirit into
unity; man is their synthesis. Thus we relate man with the animal
world, but he is at the same time raised above the animals because he
is the bearer of the spirit.
Botany, taught
in the way I have indicated, brings life into the child's world of ideas so
that he stands rightly in the world through wisdom. A living intelligence
will then enable him to become efficient in life and to find his
place in the world.
His will is
strengthened if he has acquired an equally living conception of his own
relation to the animal world.
You will
naturally realize that what I have had to discuss here in some twenty
minutes or so must be developed stage by stage for a long period of time;
the child must gradually unite these ideas with his inmost nature. Then
they will play no small part in the position a man may take in the world
by virtue of his strength of will. The will grows inwardly strong if
a man realizes that by the grace of the living spirit he himself is
the perfecting and the synthesis of the animal kingdom.
And so the aim
of educational work must be net merely to teach facts about the plants
and animals, but also to develop character, to develop the whole
nature of the child. A true understanding of the life of plants
brings wisdom, and a living conception of his relation to the animals
strengthens the will of the child. If we have succeeded in this, the
child has entered between the ninth and tenth years, into a
relationship with the other living creatures of the earth such that
he will be able to find his own way and place in the world through
wisdom on the one hand and on the other through a purposeful strength
of will.
The one great
object of education is to enable the human being to find his way through
life by his intelligence and will. These two will develop from the life
of feeling that has unfolded in the child between the
ages of seven and nine-and-a-half. Thinking, feeling and willing are
then brought into a right relationship instead of developing in a
chaotic way. Everything is rooted in feeling. We must therefore begin
with the child's sentient life and from feeling engender the faculty
of thought through a comprehension of the kingdom of the plants. For
the life of the plants will never admit of dead conceptions. The will
is developed if we lead the child to a knowledge of his
connection with the animals and of the human spirit that lifts
man above them.
Thus we strive
to impart sound wisdom and strength of will; to the human being. This
indeed is our task in education, for this alone will make him fully man
and the evolution of the full manhood is the goal of all education.
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