LECTURE VI
Arnheim, 22nd July, 1924.
Today, before going into any further explanations
concerning questions of method, I should like to add
something more to what I said yesterday about the teachers'
conferences. We attach the greatest importance to our
relationship with the parents of our Waldorf School children
and in order to ensure complete harmony and agreement we
arrange Parents' Evenings fairly frequently, which are attended
by parents of children living in the neighbourhood. At these
meetings the intentions, methods and the various arrangements
of the school are discussed — naturally in a more or less
general way — and, in so far as this is possible in such
gatherings, the parents have the opportunity of expressing
their wishes and these are given a sympathetic hearing. In this
way the opportunity is provided actually to work out what we
should seek to achieve in our education and moreover to do this
in the whole social milieu out of which such aims have in truth
their origin. The teachers hear the ideas of the parents in
regard to the education of their children; and the parents hear
— it is our practice always to speak with the utmost
sincerity and candour — about what is taking place in the
school, what our thoughts are about the education and future of
the children and why it is that we think it necessary to have
schools which further a free approach to education. In short,
by this means the mutual understanding between teachers and
parents is not only of an abstract and intellectual nature, but
a continuous human contact is brought about. We feel this
contact to be very important, for we have nothing else to
depend upon. In a state school, everything is strictly defined.
There one knows with absolute certainty the aims which the
teacher must bear in mind; he knows for instance, that at 9
years of age a child must have reached a certain standard, and
so on. Everything is planned with exactitude.
With us everything depends on the free individuality of each
single teacher. In so far as I may be considered the director
of the school, nothing is given in the way of rules and
regulations. Actually there is no school director in the usual
sense, but each teacher reigns supreme. Instead of a school
director or headmaster we have the teachers' conferences,
in which there is a common study and a common striving towards
further progress. There is therefore a spirit, a concrete
spirit living among the college of teachers which works freely,
which is not tyrannical, which does not issue statements, rules
or programmes, but has the will continually to progress,
continually to make better and better arrangements, in meeting
the teaching requirements. Today our teachers cannot know at
all what will be good in the Waldorf School in 5 years time for
in these 5 years they will have learned a great deal and out of
the knowledge they will have to judge anew what is good and
what is not good. This is also the reason why what associations
for educational reform decide to be valuable is a matter of
complete indifference in the Waldorf School. Educational
matters cannot be thought out intellectually, they can only
arise out of teaching experience. And it is this working out of
experience which is the concern of the college of teachers. But
just because we are in this situation, just because we live in
a state of flux in regard to what we ourselves actually want,
we need a different kind of support than is given to an
ordinary school by the educational authorities, who ordain what
should be done. We need the support of that social element in
which the children are growing up. We need the inner support of
the parents in connection with all the questions which
continually crop up when the child comes to school; for he
comes to school from his parents' home.
Now
if the aim is to achieve an individual and harmonious
relationship, the teacher is concerned with the welfare of the
child possibly even more than the parents themselves to whom he
looks for support. If he does not merely let the parents come
and then proceed to give them information which they can make
nothing much of, but if, after a parents' evening, he shows a
further interest by visiting the parents in their home, then in
receiving a child of school age, about 7 years old, into his
class, he has taken on very much more than he thinks. He has
the father, the mother and other people from the child's
environment; they are standing shadowlike in the
background. He has almost as much to do with them as with the
child himself, especially where physiological-pathological
matters are concerned. The teacher must take all this
into account and work it out for himself; he must look at the
situation as a whole in order really to understand the child,
and above all to become clear in his own mind what he should do
in regard to the child's environment. By building this bridge
between himself and the parents, as he sees them in their home,
a kind of support will be brought about, a support which is
social in its nature and is at the same time both free and
living.
To
visit the parents in their home is necessary in order to foster
in the parents a concern that nothing should occur which might
damage the natural feeling a child must have for the authority
of the teacher. A lot of work must be done between the college
of teachers and the parent-body by means of an understanding
imbued with feeling, with qualities of soul. Moreover the
parent too, by getting to know the teachers, getting to know
them pretty thoroughly, must break themselves of the tendency
to be jealous of them, for indeed most parents are jealous of
their children's teachers. They feel as if the teachers want to
take the child away from them; but as soon as this feeling is
present there is an end to what can be achieved educationally
with the child. Such things, can, however, be put right if the
teacher understands how to win the true support of the parents.
This is what I wished to add to my previous remarks on the
purpose of the teachers' conferences.
Now
there is something else to be considered. We must learn to
understand those moments in a child's life which are
significant moments of transition. I have already
referred to one such moment when the teaching, which up to this
time has been imaginative and pictorial must pass over, for
instance, into teaching the child about the nature of the
plants. This point of time lies between the 9th and 10th year.
It shows itself in the child as an inner restlessness; he asks
all kinds of questions. What he asks has usually no great
importance in so far as the content is concerned; but the fact
that the questions are asked, that the child feels impelled to
ask questions, this is undoubtedly of great significance.
The
kind of relationship we establish with the child just at this
time has great importance for the whole of his life. For what
is it that indwells the soul of the child? It is something that
can be observed in every child who is not pathological. Up to
this age a child who has not been ruined by external influences
accepts the authority of the teacher quite naturally; a healthy
child who has not been ruined by being talked into all kinds of
nonsensical ideas also has a healthy respect for every grown-up
person. He looks up to such a person, taking him as an
authority quite simply and as a matter of course. Just think
back to your own childhood; realise what it means, particularly
for the quite young child, to be able to say to himself; You
may do what he does or what she does for they are good and
worthy people. The child really requires nothing else than to
place himself under an authority
In
a certain sense this feeling is somewhat shaken between the 9th
and 10th year; it is shaken simply in the course of the
development of human nature itself. It is important to be able
to perceive this clearly. At this time human nature experiences
something quite special, which does not however rise up into
the child's consciousness, but lives in indefinite sensations
and feelings. The child is unable to give it expression, but it
is there. What does the child now say to himself unconsciously?
Earlier he said out of his instinctive feelings: If my teacher
says something is good, then it is good; if he says something
is bad, it is bad; if he says something is right, it is right;
if he says it is wrong, it is wrong. If something gives my
teacher pleasure and he says it pleases him, then it is
beautiful; if he says something is ugly and it does not please
him, then it is ugly. It is quite a matter of course for the
young child to look upon his teacher as his model. But now,
between the 9th and 10th year this inner certainty is somewhat
shaken. The child begins to ask himself in his life of feeling:
Where does he or she get it all from? Who is the teacher's
authority? Where is this authority? At this moment the child
begins to feel an inner urge to break through the visible human
being, who until now has been for him a god, to that which
stands behind him as super-sensible or invisible God, or Divine
Being. Now the teacher, facing the child, must contrive in some
simple way to confirm this feeling in him. He must approach the
child in such a way that he feels: Behind my teacher there is
something super-sensible which gives him support. He does not
speak in an arbitrary way; he is a messenger from the
Divine.
One
must make the child aware of this. But how? Least of all by
preaching. One can only give a hint in words, one will achieve
nothing whatever by a pedantic approach. But if one comes up to
the child and perhaps says something to him which as far as
content goes has no special importance, if one says a few words
which perhaps are quite unimportant but which are spoken in
such a tone of voice that he sees: He or she has a heart, this
heart itself believes in what is standing behind, — then
something can be achieved. We must make the child aware of this
standing within the universe, but we must make him aware of it
in the right way. Even if he cannot yet take in abstract,
rationalistic ideas, he already has enough understanding to
come and ask a question: Oh, I would so much like to know ....
Children of this age often come with such questions. If we now
say to him: Just think, what I am able to give you I receive
from the sun; if the sun were not there I should not be able to
give you anything at all in life; if the divine power of the
moon were not there to preserve for us while we sleep what we
receive from the sun I should not be able to give you anything
either. In so far as its content is concerned we have not said
anything of particular importance. If however we say it with
such warmth that the child perceives that we love the sun and
the moon, then we can lead him beyond the stage at which he
asks these questions and in the majority of cases this holds
good for the whole of life. One must know that these critical
moments occur in the child's life. Then quite of itself the
feeling will arise: Up to this time when telling stories about
the fir tree and the oak, about the buttercup and dandelion, or
about the sunflower and the violet, I have spoken in fairytale
fashion about Nature and in this way I have led the child into
a spiritual world; but now the time has come when I can begin
to tell stories taken from the Gospels. If we begin to do this
earlier, or try to teach him anything in the nature of a
catechism we destroy something in the child, but if we begin
now, when he is trying to break through towards the spiritual
world, we do something which the child demands with his whole
being.
Now
where is that book to be found in which the teacher can read
what teaching is? The children themselves are this book. We
should not learn to teach out of any other book than the one
lying open before us and consisting of the children
themselves; but in order to read in this book we need the
widest possible interest in each individual child and nothing
must divert us from this. Here the teacher may well experience
difficulties and these must be consciously overcome.
Let
us assume that the teacher has children of his own. In this
case he is faced with a more direct and more difficult task
than if he had no children. He must therefore be all the more
conscious just in this respect and above all he must not hold
the opinion that all children should be like his own. He must
not think this even subconsciously. He must ask himself whether
it is not the case that people who have children are
subconsciously of the opinion that all children should be like
theirs.
We
see therefore that what the teacher has perforce to admit
touches on the most intimate threads of the life of soul. And
unless he penetrates to these intimate subconscious threads he
will not find complete access to the children, while at the
same time winning their full confidence. Children suffer great,
nay untold damage if they come to believe that other children
are the teacher's favourites. This must be avoided at all
costs. It is, not so easily avoided as people usually think,
but it can be avoided if the teacher is imbued with all those
principles which can result from an anthroposophical knowledge
of man. Then such a matter finds its own solution.
There is something which calls for special attention in
connection with the theme I have chosen for this course
of lectures, something which is connected with the significance
of education for the whole world and for humanity. It lies in
the very nature of human existence that the teacher, who has so
much to do with children and who as a rule has so little
opportunity of living outside his sphere of activity, needs
some support from the outer world, needs necessarily to look
out into this world. Why is it that teachers so easily become
dried up? It happens because they have continually to stoop to
the level of the child. We certainly have no reason to make fun
of the teacher if, limited to the usual conceptual approach to
teaching, he becomes dried up. We should nevertheless perceive
where the danger lies, and the anthroposophical teacher is in a
position to be specially aware of this. For if the average
teacher's comprehension of history gradually becomes that
of a school textbook — and this may well happen in
the course of a few years' teaching — where should he
look for another kind of comprehension, for ideas in
keeping with what is truly human? How can the situation be
amended? The time remaining to the teacher after his school
week is usually spent trying to recover from fatigue, and often
only parish pump politics plays a part in forming his attitude
towards questions of world importance. Thus the soul life
of such a teacher does not turn outwards and enter into the
kind of understanding which is necessary for a human being
between say, the ages of 30 and 40. Furthermore he does not
keep fit and well if he thinks that the best way to recuperate
in leisure hours is to play cards or do something else which is
in no way connected with the life of the spirit.
The
situation of a teacher who is an anthroposophist, whose life is
permeated with anthroposophy, is very different. His
perspective of the world is continually widening; his sphere of
vision extends ever further and further. It is very easy to
show how these things affect each other — It is indicated
by the fact that the most enthusiastic anthroposophist, if, for
instance, he becomes a teacher of history, immediately tends to
carry anthroposophy into his conception of history and so falls
into the error of wanting to teach not history, but
anthroposophy. This is also something one must try to avoid. It
will be completely avoided if such a teacher, having on the one
hand his children and on the other hand anthroposophy, feels
the need of building a bridge between the school and the
homes of the parents. Even though anthroposophy is knowledge as
applied to man, understanding as applied to man, there are
nevertheless necessities in life which must be observed.
How do people often think today, influenced as they are by
current ideas in regard to educational reform or even by
revolutionary ideas in this field? I will not at this moment
enter into what is said in socialist circles, but will confine
myself to what is thought by those belonging to the prosperous
middle classes. There the view is held that people should get
out of the town and settle in the country in order that many
children may be educated right away from the town. Only so, it
is felt, can they develop naturally. And so on, and so on. But
how does such a thought fit into a more comprehensive
conception of the world? It really amounts to an admission of
one's own helplessness. For the point is not to think out some
way in which a number of children may be educated quite apart
from the world, according to one's own intellectual,
abstract ideas, but rather to discover how children may be
helped to grow into true human beings within the social milieu
which is their environment. One must muster one's strength and
not take children away from the social milieu in which they are
living. It is essential to have this courage. It is something
which is connected with the world significance of
education.
But
then there must be a deep conviction that the world must find
its way into the school. The world must continue to exist
within the school, albeit in a childlike way. If therefore we
would stand on the ground of a healthy education we should not
think out all kinds of occupational activity intended only for
children. For instance all kinds of things are devised for
children to do. They must learn to plait; they must carry out
all kinds of rather meaningless activities which have
absolutely nothing to do with life, merely to keep them busy.
Such methods can never serve any good purpose in the child's
development. On the contrary, all play activity at school must
be a direct imitation of life. Everything must proceed out of
life, nothing should be thought out. Hence, in spite of the
good intentions lying behind them, those things which have been
introduced into the education of little children by Froebel or
others are not directly related to the real development of the
children. They are thought out, they belong to our
rationalistic age. Nothing that is merely thought out should
form part of a school's activity.
Above all there must be a secret feeling that life must hold
sway everywhere in education. In this connection one can have
quite remarkable experiences. I have told you already that the
child who has reached the stage of changing his teeth should
have the path of learning made smooth for him by means of
painting or drawing. Writing — a form of drawing which
has become abstract — should be developed out of a kind
of painting-drawing or drawing-painting. But in doing this it
should be borne in mind that the child is very sensitive to
aesthetic impressions. A little artist is hidden somewhere
inside him, and it is just here that quite interesting
discoveries can be made. A really good teacher may be put in
charge of a class, someone who is ready to carry out the things
I have been explaining, someone who is full of enthusiasm and
who says: One must simply do away with all the earlier methods
of education and begin to educate in this new way! So now he
starts off with this business of painting-drawing or
drawing-painting. The pots of paint and the paint brushes are
ready and the children take up their brushes. At this point one
can have the following experience. The teacher simply has no
idea of the difference between a colour that shines and one
that does not shine. He has already become too old. In this
respect one can have the strangest experiences. I once had the
opportunity of telling an excellent chemist about our efforts
to produce radiant, shining colours for the paintings in the
Goetheanum and how we were experimenting with colours made out
of plants. Thereupon he said: But today we are already able to
do much better — today we actually have the means whereby
we can produce colours which are iridescent and begin to
shimmer when it is dark. This chemist understood not a word of
what I had been saying; he immediately thought in terms of
chemistry. Grown-up people often have no sense for a shining
colour. Children still have this sense. Everything goes
wonderfully with very few words if one is able to read out of
the nature of childhood what the child still possesses. The
teacher's guidance must however be understanding and artistic
in its approach, then the child will find his way easily into
everything his teacher wishes to bring to him.
All
this can however only be brought about if we feel deeply that
school is a place for young life; but at the same time we must
realise what is suitable for adult life. Here we must cultivate
a sensitivity as to what can and what cannot be done. Please
let no one take offence at what I am about to say. Last year in
the framework of a conference on anthroposophical education the
following took place. There was the wish to show to a public
audience what has such an important part to play in our
education: Eurythmy. This was done, but it was done in the
following manner. In this particular place children gave a
demonstration of what they had learned at school in their
eurythmy lessons and a performance showing eurythmy as an art
was only given later. Things were not arranged so that first
people were given the opportunity of gaining some
understanding of eurythmy, so that they might perhaps
say: Ah, so that is eurythmy, that is what has been introduced
into the school. It was done the other way round; the
children's eurythmy demonstration was given first place, with
the result that the audience was quite unconvinced and had no
idea what it was all about. Just imagine that up till now there
had been no art of painting: then all of a sudden an exhibition
was held showing how children begin to daub with colours! Just
as little was it possible for those who were outside the
anthroposophical movement to see in this children's
demonstration what is really intended and what actually
underlies anthroposophy and eurythmy. Such a demonstration only
has meaning if eurythmy is first introduced as an art; for then
people can see what part it has to play in life and its
significance in the world of art. Then the importance of
eurythmy in education will also be recognised. Otherwise people
may well say: Today all kinds of whimsical ideas are rife in
the world — and eurythmy will be looked upon as just such
another whimsical idea.
These are things which must lead us, not only to prepare
ourselves for our work in education in the old, narrow sense,
but to work with a somewhat wider outlook so that the school is
not sundered from life but is an inseparable part of it. This
is just as important as to think out some extremely clever
method in education. Again and again I have had to lay stress
on the fact that it is the attitude of mind which counts, the
attitude of mind and the gift of insight. It is obvious that
not everything can be equally perfect; this goes without
saying. I do beg you not to take amiss what I have just said;
this applies also to anthroposophists. I appreciate everything
that is done, as it is here, with such willing sacrifice. But
if I were not to speak in this way the following might well
happen. Because wherever there is light there are also strong
shadows, so wherever efforts are made to do things in a more
spiritual way, there too the darkest shadows arise. Here the
danger is actually not less than in the usual conventional
circles, but greater. And it is particularly necessary
for us, if we are to be equal to the tasks with which we shall
be faced in a life which is becoming more and more complicated,
to be fully awake and aware of what life is demanding of human
beings. Today we no longer have those sharply defined
traditions which guided an earlier humanity. We can no longer
content ourselves with what our forefathers deemed right; we
must bring up our children so that they may be able to form
their own judgments. It is therefore imperative to break
through the narrow confines of our preconceived ideas and take
our stand within the all-comprehensive life and work of the
world. We must no longer, as in earlier times, continue to find
simple concepts by means of which we would seek to explain
far-reaching questions of life. For the most part, even if
there is no desire to be pedantic, the attempt is made to
characterise most things with superficial definitions, much in
the same way as was done in a certain Greek school of
philosophy. When the question was put: what is a man? —
the explanation given was as follows: A man is a living being
who stands on two legs and has no feathers. — Many
definitions which are given today are based on the same
pattern, — But the next day, after someone had done some
hard thinking as to what might lie behind these portentous
words, he brought with him a plucked goose, for this was a
being able to stand on two legs and having no feathers and he
now asserted that this was a man. This is only an extreme case
of what you find for instance in Goethe's play, “Goetz
von Berlechingen,” where the little boy begins to relate
what he knows about geography. When he comes to his own
district he describes it according to his lesson book and then
goes on to describe a man whose development has taken place in
this same neighbourhood. He has however not the faintest idea
that the latter is his father. Out of sheer
“erudition,” based on what he has learned out of
the book, he does not know his own father. Nevertheless these
things do not go so far as the experience I once had in Weimar,
where there are, of course, newspapers. These are produced in
the way that usually happens in small places. Bits and pieces
of news regarded as suitable are cut out of newspapers
belonging to larger towns and inserted into the paper in
question. So on one occasion, on 22nd January, we in Weimar
read the following item of news: Yesterday a violent
thunderstorm broke over our town. This piece of news had,
however, been taken out of the Leipziger Nachrichten.
Similar things happen in life and we are continually caught in
the web of their confusion. People theorise in abstract
concepts. They study the theory of relativity and in so
doing get the notion that it is all the same whether someone
travels by car to Oosterbeek or whether Oosterbeek comes to him.
If however anyone should wish to draw a conclusion based on
reality he would have to say: If the car is not used it does
not suffer wear and tear and the chauffeur does not get tired.
Should the opposite be the case the resulting effect will
likewise be opposite. If one thinks in this way then, without
drawing a comparison between every line and movement, he
will know out of an inner commonsense that his own being is
changed when from a state of rest it is brought into movement.
Bearing in mind the kind of thinking prevalent today, it is no
wonder that a theory of relativity develops out of it when
attention is turned to things in isolation. If however one goes
back to reality it will become apparent that there is no accord
between reality and what is thought out on the basis of mere
relationship. Today, whether or not we are learned or clever we
live perpetually outside reality; we live in a world of ideas
in much the same way as the little boy in
Goetz von Berlechingen,
who did not know his father, in spite of having read a
description of him in his geography book. We do not live in
such a way as to have direct contact with reality.
But
this is what we must bring into the school; we must face this
direct impact of reality. We are able to do so if above all we
learn to understand the true nature of man and what is
intimately connected with him. It is for this reason that again
and again I have to point out how easy it is for people today
to assert that the child should be taught pictorially, by means
of object lessons, and that nothing should be brought to him
that is beyond his immediate power of comprehension. But in so
doing we are drawn into really frightful trivialities. I have
already mentioned the calculating machine. Now just consider
the following: At the age of 8 I take something in but I
do not really understand it. All I know is that it is my
teacher who says it. Now I love my teacher. He is quite
naturally my authority. Because he has said it I accept it with
my whole heart. At the age of 15 I still do not understand it.
But when I am 35 I meet with an experience in life which calls
up, as though from wonderful spiritual depths, what I did not
understand when I was 8 years old, but which I accepted solely
on the authority of the teacher whom I loved. Because he
was my authority I felt sure it must be true. Now life brings
me another experience and suddenly, in a flash, I understand
the earlier one. All this time it had remained hidden within
me, and now life grants me the possibility of understanding it.
Such an experience gives rise to a tremendous sense of
obligation. And one cannot do otherwise than say: Sad indeed it
is for anyone who experiences no moments in life when out of
his own inner being something rises up into consciousness which
he accepted long ago on the basis of authority and which he is
only now able to understand. No one should be deprived of such
an experience, for in later years it is the source of
enthusiastic and purposeful activity in life.
[Walter de la Mare has described this experience
and the joy of saying: “Ah, so that was the meaning of
that.”]
But
let us add something else. I said that between the change of
teeth and puberty children should not be given moral precepts,
but in the place of these care should be taken to ensure that
what is good pleases them because it pleases their teacher, and
what is bad displeases them because it displeases their
teacher. During the second period of life everything should be
built up on sympathy with the good, antipathy for the bad. Then
moral feelings are implanted deeply in the soul and there is
established a sense of moral well-being in experiencing what is
good and a sense of moral discomfort in experiencing what is
bad. Now comes the time of puberty. Just as walking is fully
developed during the first 7 years, speech during the second 7
years, so during the third 7 years of life thinking comes fully
into its own. It becomes independent. This only takes place
with the oncoming of puberty; only then are we really capable
of forming a judgment. If at this time, when we begin to form
thoughts out of an inner urge, feelings have already been
implanted in us in the way I have indicated, then a good
foundation has been laid and we are able to form judgments. For
instance: this pleases me and I am in duty bound to act in
accordance with it; that displeases me and it is my duty to
leave it alone. The significance of this is that duty itself
grows out of pleasure and displeasure; it is not instilled into
me, but grows out of pleasure and displeasure. This is the
awakening of true freedom in the human soul. We experience
freedom through the fact that the sense for what is moral is
the deepest individual impulse of the individual human soul. If
a child has been led to a sense of the moral by an authority
which is self-understood, so that the moral lives for him in
the world of feeling, then after puberty the conception of duty
works out of his individual inner human being. This is a
healthy procedure. In this way we lead the children rightly to
the point at which they are able to experience what individual
freedom is. Why do people not have this experience today? They
do not have it because they cannot have it, because before
puberty a knowledge of good and bad was instilled into them;
what they should and should not do was inculcated. But moral
instruction which pays no heed to a right approach by
gradual stages dries up the human being, makes out of him, as
it were, a skeleton of moral precepts on which the conduct of
life is hung like clothes on a coat-hanger.
If
everything in life is to form a harmonious whole,
education must follow a quite different course from the
one usually pursued. It must be understood that the child goes
through one stage between birth and the change of teeth,
another between the change of teeth and puberty and yet another
between puberty and the age of 21. Why does the child do this
or that in the years before he is 7? Because he wants to
imitate. He wants to do what he sees being done in his
immediate surroundings. But what he does must be
connected with life, it must be led over into living
activity. We can do very much to help bring this about if we
accustom the child to feel gratitude for what he receives from
his environment. Gratitude is the basic virtue in the
child between birth and the change of teeth. If he sees that
everyone who stands in some kind of relationship to him in the
outer world shows gratitude for what he receives from this
world; if, in confronting the outer world and wanting to
imitate it, the child sees the kind of gestures that express
gratitude, then a great deal is done towards establishing in
him the right moral human attitude. Gratitude is what belongs
to the first 7 years of life.
If
gratitude has been developed in the child during this first
period it will now be easy between the 7th and 14th years to
develop what must be the activating impulse in everything he
does. This is love. Love is the virtue belonging to the second
period of life. And only after puberty does there develop out
of what has been experienced with love between the change of
teeth and puberty that most inward of human impulses, the
impulse of duty. Then what Goethe once expressed so
beautifully becomes the guiding line for life. Goethe
asks: “What is duty? It is when one loves what one
commands oneself.” This is the goal to which we must
attain. We shall however only reach it when we are led to it by
stages: Gratitude — Love — Duty.
A
few days ago we saw how things arising out of an earlier epoch
of life are carried over into later ones. I spoke about this in
answer to a question. Now I must point out that this has its
good side also; it is something that must be. Of course I do
not mean that gratitude should cease with the 7th year or love
with the 14th year. But here we have the very secret of life:
what is developed in one epoch can be carried over into later
epochs, but there will be metamorphosis, intensification,
change. We should not be able to carry over the good belonging
to one epoch were there not also the possibility of carrying
over the bad. Education however must concern itself with this
and see to it that the force inherent in the human being,
enabling him to carry over something out of an earlier into a
later epoch, is used to further what is good. In order to
achieve this however we must make use of what I said yesterday.
Let us take the case of a child in whom, owing to certain
underlying pathological tendencies, there is the
possibility of moral weakness in later life. We perceive
that what is good does not really please him, neither does what
is bad awaken his displeasure. In this respect he makes no
progress. Then, because love is not able to develop in the
right way between the 7th and the 14th year, we try to make use
of what is inherent in human nature itself, we try to develop
in the child a real sense of gratitude, to educate him so that
he turns with real gratitude to the self-understood authority
of the teacher. If we do this, things will improve in respect
of love also. A knowledge of human nature will prevent us from
setting about things in such a way that we say: This child is
lacking in love for the good and antipathy for the bad; I must
instil this into him! It cannot be done. But things will go of
themselves if we foster gratitude in the child. It is therefore
essential to know the part gratitude plays in relation to love
in the course of moral development in life; we must know that
gratitude is a natural development in human nature during the
first years of life and that love is active in the whole human
organisation as a quality of soul before it comes to physical
expression at puberty. For what then makes itself felt
outwardly is active between the years of 7 and 14 as the
deepest principle of life and growth in man; it weaves and
lives in his inmost being. Here, where it is possible to
discuss these things on a fundamental basis, I may be allowed
to say what is undoubtedly a fact. When a teacher has once
understood the nature of an education that takes its
stand on a real knowledge of man, when on the one side he is
engaged on the actual practice of such an education, and when
on the other side he is actively concerned in the study of the
anthroposophical conception of the world, then each works
reciprocally on the other. For the teacher must work in the
school in such a way that he takes as a foregone conclusion the
fact that love is inwardly active in the child and then comes
to outer expression in sexuality.
The
anthroposophical teacher also attends meetings where the world
conception of anthroposophy is studied. There he hears from
those who have already acquired the necessary knowledge
derived from Initiation Wisdom about such things as the
following: The human being consists of physical body, etheric
body, astral body and ego. Between the 7th and 14th years the
etheric body works mainly on the physical body; the astral body
descends into the physical and etheric bodies at the time of
puberty. But anyone able to penetrate deeply into these
matters, anyone able to perceive more than just physical
processes, whose perceptions always include spiritual processes
and, when the two are separated, can perceive each separately,
such a man or woman can discern how in an 11 or 12 year old boy
the astral body is already sounding, chiming, as it were, with
the deeper tone which will first make itself heard outwardly at
puberty. And a similar process takes place in the astral body
of an 11 or 12 year old girl.
These things are actual, and if they are regarded as realities
they will throw light on life's problems. It is just concerning
these very things that one can have quite remarkable
experiences. I will not withhold such experiences. In the
year 1906 I gave a number of lectures in Paris before a
relatively small circle of people. I had prepared my lectures
bearing these people specially in mind, taking account of the
fact that in this circle there were men of letters, writers,
artists and others who at this particular epoch were concerned
with quite specific questions. Since then things have changed,
but at that time a certain something lay behind the questions
in which these people were interested. They were of the type
which gets up in the morning filled with the notion: I belong
to a Society which is interested in the history of literature,
the history of the arts; when one belongs to such a Society one
wears this sort of tie, and since the year so-and-so one no
longer goes to parties in tails or dinner jacket. One is aware
of this when invited to dine where these and similar topics are
discussed. Then in the evening one goes to the theatre and sees
plays which deal with current problems! The so-called poets
then write such plays themselves. At first there is a man of
deep and inward sensibility, out of whose heart these
great problems arise in an upright and honourable way.
First there is a Strindberg. Later on follow those who
popularise Strindberg for a wider public. And so, at the time I
held these Paris lectures, that particular problem was much
discussed which shortly before had driven the tragic Weininger
to suicide. The problem which Weininger portrays in so
childlike yet noble a fashion in
Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character)
was the problem of the
day. After I had dealt with those things which were essential
to an understanding of the subject I proceeded to explain that
every human being has one sex in the external physical body,
but bears the other sex in the etheric body. So that the woman
is man in etheric body, and the man is woman. Every human being
in his totality is bi-sexual; he bears the other sex within
him. I can actually observe when something of this kind is
said, how people begin to look out of their astral bodies, how
they suddenly feel that a problem is solved for them over which
they have chewed for a long time, and how a certain
restlessness, but a pleasant kind of restlessness is
perceptible among the audience. Where there are big problems,
not merely insignificant sensations in life, but where
there is real enthusiasm, even if it is sometimes close to
small talk, then again one becomes aware of how a sense of
relief, of being freed from a burden, emanates from those
present.
So
the anthroposophical teacher always looks on big problems
as being something which can work on him in such a way that he
remains human at every age of life; so that he does not
become dried up, but remains fresh and alert and able to bring
this freshness with him into the school. It is a completely
different thing whether a teacher only looks into text books
and imparts their content to the children, or whether he steps
out of all this and, as human being pure and simple, confronts
the great perspectives of the world. In this case he carries
what he himself has absorbed into the atmosphere of the
classroom when he enters it and gives his lesson.
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