THE
PEDAGOGY OF THE WEST AND OF CENTRAL EUROPE: THE INNER ATTITUDE OF THE
TEACHER.
Lecture 1,
Stuttgart, September 15, 1920.
My
Dear Friends,
I had
intended during the time I am able to spend here to give a kind of
supplement to many of the things which I brought before you last year in
our introductory educational courses. However, the days are so few, and
according to what I have just learned there are so many things to be done
during this time, that I am hardly able to say whether we shall get further
than these scanty words of introduction today. It is hardly possible to
speak of any kind of program.
What I
would like to speak of in this introduction is this: to what I gave you
last year I should like to add something about the teacher himself, about
the educator. Of course what I shall have to say about the nature of the
teacher should be taken quite aphoristically. It would indeed be best if it
were to take shape in you gradually, if it were to develop further through
your own thinking and feeling.
It is
especially teachers whose attention should be drawn to the fact
— and in doing so we are taking our stand on an
anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and it is our intention to
shape out of this the education necessary for the present time
— it is this crucial fact above all, to which attention
should be drawn: the teacher must really have a deep feeling for the nature
of the esoteric.
In our
time — an age of democracy and journalism
— it is of course true that we hardly have a real sense,
a valid sense for what is meant by the esoteric. We believe today that what
is true is true, what is right is right, and that it should be possible to
proclaim what is true and right before the world, once it has been
formulated in a way one deems to be correct. Now in real life this is not
so: here matters are quite different. The essential point is that you can
unfold a certain kind of effectiveness in your actions only if the impulses
that produce them are guarded in the soul as a most sacred, hidden wealth.
And it would be necessary for the teacher especially to guard much as
sacred, hidden wealth, regarding it as something that plays a role only in
the proceedings and debates taking place within the body of teachers. The
meaning of such a statement is not particularly clear to begin with;
nonetheless it will become clear to you. I should have to say a great deal
to make it fully understandable, but it will become clearer if to begin
with I say the following.
The
principle I have just stated has a universal significance, embracing the
entire civilization of our time. If we think of the education of young
people today, we must always bear in mind that we are working on the
feelings, the ideas, the will impulses of the next generation. We must be
clear that our present work is to prepare this next generation for definite
tasks that will have to be accomplished sometime in the future of mankind.
When something of this sort has been said, the question at once arises:
what is the real cause for mankind having fallen into the widespread misery
in which it is today? Mankind has come into such misery because it has for
the most part made itself dependent, dependent through and through, on the
manner of thinking and feeling peculiar to western man. We can say that if
someone in Central Europe today speaks of
Fichte,
Herder,
or even of
Goethe,
then — if he is active in public life (say as a
journalist, as a writer of best-selling books, or the like)
— he is much farther removed from the true spiritual
impulse living in Fichte, Herder or Goethe when he is active or thinking in
Berlin or Vienna, than he is from what is being felt and thought today in
London, Paris, New York or Chicago. Fundamentally speaking, matters have
gradually worked out in such a way that our whole civilization has been
flooded by impulses arising from the world view of the western peoples; our
entire public life lives according to the philosophy of these
nations.
We
have to admit that this is particularly true where the art of education is
concerned, for from the last third of the 19th century onwards the peoples
of Central Europe have taken their lead in such matters from the people of
the West. It is taken for granted today among men who debate educational
matters among other topics that they should utilize the habits of thought
that come from the West. If you were to trace back all the educational
ideas considered reasonable in Central Europe today, you would find their
source in the views of Herbert Spencer or men of his sort. We do not pay
attention to the numerous pathways by which the views of such men enter the
heads of people who set the tone in spiritual matters in Central Europe.
Nonetheless these paths exist and are to be found. And if you take the
spirit of an educational philosophy such as appeared through a man like
Fichte (I will not lay any special importance on its details), you will
find it not merely totally different from what is generally considered
sensible pedagogy today; it is fact that the men of our time are hardly
capable of bringing their souls into the way of thinking and feeling that
would permit them to conceive how the intentions of a Fichte or Herder
might be developed farther. Thus what we experience today in the field of
pedagogy, in the art of education, what has become the rule there, is
precisely the opposite of what it ought to be. Let me draw your attention
to something Spencer has written.
Spencer was of the
opinion that object lessons should be so handled that they would lead over
into the experiments of the naturalist, into the research of the man of
science. What, according to this, should be done in school? We should teach
children in such a way that when they are grown up and the opportunity
presents itself, they can pursue further what they have learned from us in
school about minerals, plants, animals, etc. and become then proper
scientific researchers or thinkers. It is true, this sort of idea is
frequently contested; nonetheless it is done in practice, and for the
reason that our textbooks are written with this in mind (and it would occur
to nobody to alter, re-think or do away with textbooks.) It is a fact, for
example, that textbooks about botany are written more for a future botanist
than for human beings in general. Similarly, textbooks for zoology are so
conceived that they serve the future zoologist but not human beings in
general.
Now
the peculiar thing is, that we should be striving today for precisely the
opposite of what Spencer laid down as a true educational principle. It
would be hard to imagine a graver error in elementary school teaching, than
to train children to deal with objects, say plants or animals, in such a
way that, if pursued further, the child could become a botanist or
zoologist. If, on the contrary, we could plan our lessons, when presenting
facts about plants or animals, so that it is made difficult for children to
become botanists or zoologists, we would then be closer to the mark than if
we were to follow the Spencerian axiom. For nobody should become a botanist
or zoologist because of what he learns in elementary school. A man should
become a botanist or zoologist solely because of his special gifts, and
these reveal themselves quite simply in the choice that must result when
life unfolds within a true art of education. Because of his talent! Which
means, if his gifts predispose him to be a botanist, he can become one; if
he has the natural ability to become a zoologist, he can become one. This
must come about through the individual's ability, i.e.
through his predetermined karma, the laws of destiny. This must follow from
our insight: in this child a botanist is hidden, in that one a zoologist.
It must never be the result of an elementary school curriculum designed to
prepare him for this scientific speciality. But just reflect on what has
happened of late. It has come about, sad to say, that it is the scientists
who have designed our education. People accustomed to thinking
scientifically have the largest voice in education. That is to say, it has
been deemed that the teacher as such has something in common with the
scientist. This has gone so far that a scientific training is taken to be a
teacher training, whereas the two must be different, through and through.
If the teacher becomes a scientist, if he gives himself up in the narrow
sense to thinking scientifically — this he may do as a
private person but not as a teacher — then he deserves
what frequently happens, that the teacher cuts a ridiculous figure in his
class, among his students, among his colleagues, and he is poked fun at.
Goethe's 'Baccalaureus' is not such a rarity at the higher levels as is
ordinarily supposed.
And
truthfully, if we were to ask ourselves whether we should be more on the
side of the teacher when the students poke fun at him, or more on the side
of the students, then, in the present state of affairs in education, we
would sooner take the students' part. For the direction things have taken
can be observed best in our universities. What are our universities in fact
— institutions for teaching mature young men and women,
or research institutes? They try to be both, and precisely for this reason
they have become the caricatures they are today. People usually go so far
as to point to this as a particular advantage of our universities, that
they are at one and the same time teaching and research institutions. But
this is the very thing that introduces into the higher centres of learning
all the harm that is done to education when it has been planned by
scientists. And then the mischief is passed on down the line to the
secondary schools and ultimately to the elementary schools as well. This is
what we cannot sufficiently bear in mind: an art of education must proceed
from life and cannot issue from abstract scientific thinking.
Now
this is the peculiar state of affairs: to begin with, out of the Western
culture comes a pedagogy with a scientific, even a natural-scientific
basis, and on the other hand we have a forgotten pedagogy based on life, a
pedagogy drawn directly from life, when we recall what lived in Herder,
Fichte, Jean Paul, Schiller and similar minds.
It is,
however, the world-historical mission of the Central European peoples to
cultivate this particular pedagogy, to have so to speak, an esoteric task
of developing this pedagogy. There is much that will become possible for
mankind to do as a community, and this must be so, if there is to be
improvement in social matters in the future. But what is emerging as an art
of education from the whole of the spiritual culture that is specifically
Central European this the peoples of the West will not be able to
comprehend. On the contrary it will infuriate them. We can first speak to
than of this when they decide to take their stand on the esoteric
foundations of spiritual science. With regard to all those things which
have been looked upon with such pride over the last 40 years in Germany, on
which the claim to major advances in Germany has been based, Germany is
lost. All that points to the dominance hegemony of the Western peoples.
There is nothing to be done about it, and we can only hope that we arouse
sufficient understanding for the Threefold Social Order, so that on the
basis of this understanding, the peoples of the West will take it
up.
With
regard to what has to be given for the art of education, we have something
to give the world from Central Europe which nobody else can give
— neither an Oriental, nor a man from the West. Yet we
must have the discretion to keep this in those circles capable of
understanding it. We must know how to guard it, with a certain confidence,
knowing that it is this guarding which gives effectiveness to our affairs.
We have to know what things to be silent about in the presence of certain
people, if we want to be effective. Above all we must be clear that we
cannot hope to influence the mode of thought, proceeding from the West,
which is indeed indispensable for some branches of modern civilization. We
must know that we have nothing whatsoever to hope for from that quarter for
what we have to foster as an art of education.
Herbert Spencer
has written something of unusual interest about education. He compiles a
list of axioms, or 'principles' as he calls them, concerning intellectual
education. Among these principles is one on which he lays great emphasis:
in teaching, one should never proceed from the abstract, but always from
the concrete — one should always elaborate a subject
from an individual case. So he writes his book on education, and there we
find, before he enters into anything concrete, the worst thickets of
abstractions, really nothing but abstract chaff, and the man fails to
notice that he is carrying out the opposite of the principles which he has
argued are indispensable. We have here the example of an eminent and
leading philosopher of the present time, in complete contradiction with
what he has just advocated.
Now
you saw last year that our pedagogy is not to be built upon abstract
educational principles, upon this or that which might be affirmed, such as
that we shouldn't introduce things to the child which are foreign to his
nature but rather develop his individuality, etc. You know that our art of
education should have its foundation in genuine empathy with the child's
nature, that it should be built up in the widest sense on a knowledge of
the evolving human being. And we have compiled sufficient material in our
first course, and then later in the teachers' conferences, concerning the
nature of the growing child. If we as teachers were able to engage
ourselves with this unfolding being of the child, then out of this
perception itself would spring awareness of how we should proceed. In this
regard we must as teachers become artists. Just as it is quite impossible
for the artist to take a book on aesthetics in hand, and then to paint or
carve according to the principles laid down there, so should it be quite
impossible for the teacher to use one of those instructors' manuals in
order to teach. What the teacher needs is true insight into what the human
being is in reality, what he becomes as he develops through the stages of
his childhood. Here it is above all necessary that this be clear: We are
teaching to begin with, let us say, the six or seven year old children in a
first class. Now our teaching will be bad every time, will never have
fulfilled its purpose, if after working for a year with this first class we
do not say to ourselves — who is it now that has really
learned the most? It is I, the teacher! If on the contrary we are able to
say to ourselves something like this —
“At the start of the school year I was equipped with
noble educational principles, I have followed the best authorities on
teaching, I have done my best to carry out these principles.”
— If we really had done this, we would most certainly
have taught badly. But we would most certainly have taught the best of all
if we had entered the classroom each morning in great trepidation, without
very much assurance in our own capacity, and then at the end of the year
could say, it is really I myself who have learned the most. For our ability
to say this depends on how we have acted, on what we have done, on always
having the feeling: 1 am growing by helping the children grow. I am
experimenting, in the purest sense of the word. I can't really do very
much, but a certain capacity grows in me by working with the children. From
time to time we will have the feeling, with, one or another kind of child
there is not much to be done, but we will have taken pains with them.
Through the special gifts of other children we will have learned certain
things. In short we leave the campaign quite a different person from when
we entered it; we have learned to do what we were incapable of doing when
we began teaching a year before. We say to ourselves at the end of the year
— yes, now I canreally
do
what I ought to have been doing. This is a very real feeling in which a
secret lies hidden. If we had really been capable, at the beginning of the
year, of everything we were able to do at the year's end, then our teaching
would have been bad. We have given good lessons because we have had to work
at them as we went along. I must put this in the form of a paradox. Your
teaching has been good if you did not know to start with what you have
learned by the end of the year; your teaching would have been harmful, had
you known at the beginning what you have learned at the end. A remarkable
paradox!
For
many people it is important to know this, but it is most important of all
for teachers to know it. For this is a special instance of a general truth
and insight: knowledge as such, no matter what its content, knowledge that
we can grasp in the form of abstract principles, that we can bring to mind
as ideas — such knowledge can have no practical value.
Only what leads to this knowledge, what is on its way to this knowledge, is
of practical value. For the kind of knowledge we gain after a year's
teaching, achieves its value only after a man has died. This knowledge only
rises after the man dies, into the kind of reality where it can then shape
him further, can develop his individuality further. Thus it is not
ready-made knowledge that has value in life, but the work that leads to
this finished knowledge. And in the art of teaching this work has especial
value. In reality it is no different here than in the arts. I cannot
consider anyone a right-minded artist who doesn't say to himself on
finishing a work: only now are you able to do this. I don't consider a man
properly disposed as an artist, if he is satisfied with any work he has
done. He can have a certain egotistical respect for what he has made, but
he can't really be satisfied with it. In fact, a work of art when finished
loses a large share of its interest for the man who made it. This loss of
interest comes from the intrinsic nature of knowledge that is being gained
when we make something. On the contrary what is living, what is
life-spending in it, lies precisely in that it has not yet become
knowledge.
Ultimately, it is
the same with the whole of the human organism. Our head is as finished as
anything could be, for it is formed out of the forces of our previous
earth-life and is 'over-ripe'. (Men's heads are all over-ripe, even the
unripe ones.) But the rest of our organism is only at the stage of
furnishing a seed for the head of our next incarnation. It is full of life
and growth, but it is incomplete. Indeed, it will not be until our death
that the rest of our organism shows its true form, which is the form taken
by the forces active in it. The constitution of the rest of our organism
shows there is life flowing in it; ossification is at a minimum in these
parts of the body, while in the head it reaches a maximum.
This
proper sort of inward modesty, this sense that we ourselves are still in
becoming — this is what must sustain the teacher, for
more will come from this feeling than from any abstract principles. If we
stand in our classroom, conscious of the fact that it is a good tiling we
do everything imperfectly — for in that way there is
life in it — then we will teach well. If on the other
hand we are always patting ourselves on the back over the perfection of our
teaching, then it is quite certain we shall teach badly.
But
now consider that the following has come to pass. You have been responsible
for the teaching of a first class, a second and third class, etc., so that
you have actually been through everything that is to be experienced
— excitements, disappointments, successes too, if you
will. Consider that you have gone once through all the classes of an
elementary school and at the end of each year have spoken to yourself in
the spirit I have just described, and now you take your way back down
again, say from the eighth to the first class. Yes, now it might be
supposed that you should say to yourself- now I am beginning with what I
have learned, now I shall be able to do it right, now I shall be an
excellent teacher! But it won't be that way. Experience will bring you
something quite different. You will say to yourself at the end of the
second, the third and each of the following years just about the same (and
out of an attitude proper to it): I have now learned by working with seven,
eight and nine-year-old children what I could learn only in this way. At
the end of each school year I know what I should have done. And then when
you have come the second time to the fourth or fifth school year, again you
will not know what you should really do. For now you will correct what you
came to believe after teaching for a year. And thus, after you are finished
with the eighth school year and have corrected everything once more, and if
you have the good fortune to begin again with the first class, you will
find yourself in the same position. But to be sure you will teach in a
different spirit. If you go through your teaching duties with inwardly true
and noble and not foolish doubts, such as I have described, you will draw
out of this diffidence a new and imponderable power, which will make you
particularly fitted to accomplish more with the children entrusted to you.
This is without doubt true. But the effect in life will actually only be a
different one, not that much better, just different. I would say the
quality of what you are able to make out of the children will not be much
better than it was the first time; the effect will simply be a different
one. You will achieve something qualitatively different, not achieve much
more in quantity. You will achieve something different in quality, and that
is really enough. For everything that we acquire in the way described, with
the necessary noble diffidence and heartfelt humility, has the effect that
we are able to make individualities out of those we teach, individualities
in the widest sense. We cannot have the same class twice over and send out
into the world the same copies of a cut and dried educational pattern. We
can however turn human beings over to the world that are individually
different. We bring about diversity in life, but this does not derive from
the elaboration of abstract principles. In fact this diversity of life is
founded on a deeper grasp of life, as we have just described.
So you
see what matters more than anything else in a teacher is the way he regards
his holy calling. That is not without significance, for the most important
things in teaching and in education are the imponderables. A teacher who
enters his classroom with this conviction in his heart achieves something
different from another. Just as in everyday life it is not always what is
physically large that counts, but sometimes it is precisely what is small,
so it is not always what we do with big words that carries weight.
Sometimes it is that perception, that feeling which we have built up in our
hearts before we enter the classroom.
One
thing in particular is of great importance, however, and that is that we
must quickly cast off our narrower, personal selves like a snake's skin,
when we go into the class. The teacher may (since he is 'only human', as is
often said with such self-complacency) on occasion have experienced all
sorts of things in the time between the end of class on one day and the
beginning of the next. It may be that he has been warned by his creditors,
or he may have had a quarrel with his wife, as does happen in life. These
are things that put us out of sorts. Such disharmonies then provide an
undertone to our state of soul. Of course happy moods can arise also. The
father of one of your pupils who likes you particularly may have sent you a
hare, after he has been out hunting, or a bunch of flowers, if you are a
lady teacher. It is quite a natural thing to carry moods of this kind
around with us. As teachers we must train ourselves to lay aside these
moods and to let what we say be determined solely by the content of what we
are to present. Thus we should really be in a position as we picture one
thing to speak tragically (but out of the nature of the thing itself) and
then to shift over to a humorous vein as we proceed with our description,
surrendering ourselves completely to the subject. The important thing
however is that we should now be able to perceive the whole reaction of the
class to tragedy or sentimentality or humour. If we are able to do this,
then we shall be aware that tragedy, sentimentality and humour are of
extraordinary importance for the souls of the children. And if we can let
our teaching be buoyed up by an alternation between humour, sentimentality
and tragedy, if we lead over from one mood to the other and back again, if
we are really able, after presenting something for which we need a certain
heaviness, to pass over again into a certain lightness (not forced, but
arising as we surrender ourselves to the content), then bring about in the
soul's mood something akin to in and out- breathing in the bodily
organism.
As we
teach, our object is not simply to teach with and for the intellect, but
rather to be able to really take these various moods into account. For what
is tragedy, what is sentimentality, what is a heavy mood of soul? It is
exactly the same as an inbreath for the organism, the same as filling the
organism with air. Tragedy means that we are trying to contract our
physical body further and further so that in this contraction of the
physical body we become aware how the astral body comes out of it, more and
more as we do so. A humorous mood signifies that we enervate the physical
body, but in contrast we expand the astral body as much as we can,
spreading it out over its surroundings, so that we are aware, say when we
do not merely behold redness but when we grow into it, how we spread our
astrality over the redness, pass over into it. Laughing simply means that
we drive the astral out of our facial features; it is nothing else but an
astral out- breathing. Only we must have a certain sense for dynamics, if
we want to apply these things. It is not always appropriate on the heels of
something heavy and sustained to go straight over into the humorous. But we
can always find the ways and means in our teaching to prevent the childish
soul being imprisoned by the serious, the breathing between the two soul
moods.
These
are some instances, by way of introduction, of the sort of nuances of soul
mood that should be taken into consideration by the teacher as he teaches,
and which are just as important as any other aspect of teaching.