The
impressions I have gathered here in the school have prompted me
to use the short time I can be with you to say something that
emerges directly out of these impressions. After all, the
fruitfulness of our activity in an institution like the Waldorf
School depends, as does indeed the art of education as a whole,
on the ability of the teachers to develop the attitude that
will enable them to carry through their work with
assurance and be active in the right way. On this
occasion, therefore, I would like to speak in particular about
the teachers themselves. I would like to preface what I have to
say with some brief remarks I made recently in a course for
teachers in England, [Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of
Education, London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972 (14
lectures given in Ilkley, England, August 5-17, 1923).] though
from a somewhat different point of view. I then shall add
a few things that will enable you, if you let them work in the
right way on your souls, to develop this right attitude
increasingly. The question of attitude, or mood of soul, is
very much connected with the art of education. You may possess
an admirable mastery of the principles of teaching; you
may be able to work them out with intelligence and feeling; but
what we are trying to do will fall on fertile soil only if the
general attitude that we take with us into the school can be
made into a harmonious whole.
Man
is a threefold being not only from the many points of view we
often have discussed but also from those that lie a little
closer to the earthly than do the higher, spiritual viewpoints.
This threefoldness reveals itself quite specifically if we
focus on the way in which the human being has developed his
educational activity. We need not go back very far;
indeed, if we went back to very ancient times our view would
have to alter somewhat. We have only to go back to the Greek
era in human evolution to a period that still stirs the minds
of those in our Western civilization. At that period we find
that the educator was really the gymnast, intent above all upon
molding his pupil into maturity through his outer, physical,
bodily nature. However, we shall not properly understand the
Greek gymnasts, especially the earlier ones, unless we
realize that they were quite as much concerned with the
development of the soul and spirit as of the body. It is true
that the Greeks laid stress on bodily exercises, which were all
formed in an artistic sense, as the means of bringing their
pupils to maturity. What is so little realized nowadays,
however, is that these bodily exercises, whether dance
movements or some other rhythmical or gymnastic movements, were
devised in such a way that through the unfolding and expression
of rhythm, measure, and the like, spiritual beings were able to
draw near, beings who lived in the movements, in the rhythm and
measure in which the pupil was trained. While the pupil
was doing something with his arms and legs, a spiritual
influence passed from the limb system, including the metabolic
system, into the rhythmic and the nerve-sense systems; in this
way the whole human being was developed. One
therefore should not say that in Greece primary importance was
attached to the cultivation of gymnastics, for this gives the
impression that they were cultivated then as they are nowadays,
that is, mostly in an entirely outward and physical way. In
fact, with the Greeks gymnastics also included the education of
soul and spirit. The Greek educator was a gymnast; he educated
the body, and along with the body the soul and spirit, because
he had the capacity, as if by magic, to draw down the world of
soul and spirit into bodily movements. The more ancient Greek
gymnasts were perfectly conscious of this. They had no desire
to educate human beings in an abstract, intellectual way
or to teach their pupils in the way we do today. We speak
exclusively to the head, even if we do not intend to do so. The
Greeks brought their pupils into movement; they brought them
into movement that was in harmony with the dynamic of the
spiritual and physical cosmos.
In
following the course of human evolution, we find that among the
Romans the art of cultivating the soul and the spirit by way of
the bodily nature had been forgotten. They approached the soul
directly, and education took place especially through the
medium of speech, the faculty lying nearest to
the soul element in ordinary life. Roman education did, in
fact, draw forth from speech that which was to form their
pupils; the educator thus ceased to be a gymnast and became a
rhetorician. Beauty of speech was from Roman times onward the
essential element in education and actually remained so
throughout the Middle Ages. Beauty of speech — in the
forming of words and in the consciousness that the word is
being sculpturally and musically formed — has its effect
on the whole human being. The most important principles of
education were derived from this consciousness. The Greek
had gone right back to the bodily foundation of the human
being, from there drawing everything into the realm of soul and
spirit. The Roman concerned himself with the middle part
of man, with the sublimated expression of the rhythmic system,
with the musical speech of poetry. He trusted that if speech
were handled properly, this musical and sculptural-painterly
speech would work downward to the bodily and upward to the
spiritual. In this form of education also, intellectual
training played no part, but rather special importance was
attached to speaking.
Then, from the fifteenth century onward, the rhetorician as
educator was gradually superseded by the professor
[Doktor]. [The German
Doktor does not in this context refer to a
medical doctor but to a scholar with a doctoral degree.] Even
teachers who have passed through only a training college
nowadays are in this sense really “professors.”
Hitherto, there was some justification for this; if indeed the
ideal of the professor was not held in the way it once was by a
teacher pf gymnastics whom I knew well. He felt extremely
uncomfortable on any gymnastic apparatus but loved to get up on
a platform and hold forth theoretically about gymnastics. His
pupils sat crouched and bent on their benches and listened to
the gymnastics lectures. This sort of thing could not have
happened in any other institution, but in this training
college he could get up and lecture like this once a week. He
felt quite learned he felt, in fact, like a real professor. The
principle that the basis of education lies not in the rhythmic
system but in the head, in the nerve-sense system, became more
and more prominent as humanity evolved from the fifteenth
century into the modern age. Hence it is not so easy today for
teachers in the Waldorf School to adhere to the principle that
they should have no desire to realize this ideal of the learned
professor. I do not mean this outwardly but inwardly. It is not
easy, because it is a normal part of the consciousness of
modern humanity to believe that something is gained by
becoming “learned.” In our civilization, however, a
healthy condition will be achieved only when we realize that to
be “learned” in this sense is actually harmful and,
far from adding anything to a human being, it takes something
away from him. Though I am always delighted when someone nods
intelligent assent to the sort of thing about which I have been
speaking, I am also a little uncomfortable about the nodding,
because people take the matter much too lightly. There is
little inclination inwardly to lay aside the doctorate, even if
one does not have it oneself, even if one only carries the
attitude in one's general consciousness. Furthermore, the
trend that has caused the earlier gymnast and rhetorician to be
superseded by the professor is so much part and parcel of
modern civilization that it cannot easily be eradicated.
It is in education, of course, that we notice most clearly the
unfortunate effects upon a person who has gone through a
doctoral training; yet that which has put the professor
into a leading position in education has been necessary for the
entire development of intellectualism in modern culture.
We
have reached a point at which we must cultivate the synthesis
of these three elements of the human being, for this
division into gymnast, rhetorician, and professor is yet
another example of the threefoldness of human nature, and it is
above all in the realm of education that this synthesis
should be achieved. If we could manage things ideally, the
teacher should cultivate gymnastics in the noblest sense,
rhetoric in the noblest sense — with all that was
associated with it in ancient times — and also the
professorial element in the noblest sense. Then these three
elements should be integrated into a whole. I almost shudder at
having to describe so dryly what you must know in this regard
and must receive in your hearts' minds [die
Gesinnung], because I am afraid that it
may again get distorted, as happens with so much that must be
said. It must not be distorted. The teacher should simply
realize that for his own art of education he needs a synthesis
of the spiritualized gymnast, of the ensouled rhetorician, and
thirdly of the living, evolving spiritual element
[das Geistige], not the dead and abstract
spiritual element.
The
whole faculty of the school ought to work together to
assimilate these things, to develop gymnastics in the
noblest sense and also what we have in eurythmy. If you really
succeed in penetrating eurythmy inwardly, you will experience
for yourselves that there is an active element of soul and
spirit in every eurythmic movement. Every eurythmic movement
calls forth an element of soul from the deepest foundations of
the human being, and every gymnastic movement, if rightly
executed, calls forth in the human being a spiritual atmosphere
into which the spiritual element can penetrate livingly and not
in a dead, abstract way.
The
rhetorical element, in the noblest sense of the word, still has
a particular significance for the teacher today. No educator,
in whatever sphere of education he may be engaged, should fail
to do his utmost to have his own speaking approach as closely
as possible the ideal of an artistic speaking. The need for
cultivating speech as such should always be kept in mind. This
is something that has vanished so completely from man's
consciousness that in this age of intellectualism
professors of rhetoric are appointed at universities
mainly out of an old habit. Curtius was professor of rhetoric
at Berlin University, but he was not allowed to lecture on the
subject, because lectures on the art of speech were felt to be
superfluous at a place of higher education. He therefore had to
discharge his duty in other ways than by lecturing about
rhetoric, though in his official appointment he still bore the
title of professor of rhetoric. This shows how we have ceased
to attach any real value to the art of speech; this is
connected with our ever-increasing disregard for the artistic
element as such. Today we usually think because we do not know
what else to do, and that is why we have so few real thoughts.
The thoughts produced in the style of our modern thinking are
the worst possible. The best are those that rise up out of an
individual's humanness while he is engaged in some kind of
action. Those thoughts are good that evolve out of beautifully
formulated speech, when, out of such beautifully
formulated speaking, thoughts rebound in us. Then
something from the archangel lives in our thinking
through the speaking, and it is far more significant that we be
able to listen to this speaking than that we develop
prosaic human thinking, however cleverly we might do so.
This can be achieved, however, only if we, especially those
engaged in education, clearly realize how remote modern
thinking is from reality, from the world. We have, of course,
produced a splendid science, but the sad thing is that this
science knows nothing really and that, as a result of its
knowing nothing, it is driving the very life out of human
culture and civilization. We need not turn into revolutionaries
for this reason or go about shouting such things
indiscriminately in the world; what we need is to work in the
school out of this consciousness.
Not
only has thinking gradually become more and more abstract, but
so has everything relating to the content of the human soul. At
most man is still aware that his highest soul faculties
originate in sudden flashes
[einfällen], and
he is especially proud when something occurs to him
[einfällt] in
this way. Since man experiences what may be the most valuable
element in his soul as severed from the universe, he
becomes inwardly barren and lifeless, alienated from reality.
Our musicians compose music, they write melodies and harmonies,
because these happen to> occur to them. Certainly one
might think it quite a good thing if such things occur to
someone frequently ini the realm of music; but why do they
occur to him? Why should some melody suddenly occur to him out
of nothingness? There appears to be neither human nor cosmic
reason that a melody should occur suddenly to an individual who
was born in and lives in this or that time or place. Why? There
is meaning in it only when one has a connection with the cosmos
in experiencing a melody, when one experiences the connection
with the cosmos in experiencing a melody. One need not sail
away into symbolism, but the connection with the cosmos must be
experienced. The melody must really be “spoken”
into us by the spirit of the world; then it has meaning and
does something to promote progress in the world.
A
great deal of Ahrimanic influence can be found in the world
today. Indeed, the evolution of the world would be impossible
without it. One of the worst instances of the Ahrimanic,
however, is the fact that in order to become a qualified
professor a thesis has to be written; there is no real
connection between writing a thesis and becoming a professor.
The only connection is purely external, Ahrimanized. Such
things are taken seriously in our civilization today, however,
and force their way into education, because educational
institutions exert their influence from above downward,
and the whole mode of their organization is totally
unsound. Merely to say this sort of thing gets us
nowhere, except to make us unpopular and create
enemies for ourselves. In working here, however, we
should be fully awake to the fact that we are called to work
out of different premises.
Nowadays, for example, in lectures on the physiology of
nutrition, we would be told that potatoes —carbohydrates
— contain so much carbon, so much oxygen, and so
on; that protein contains so and so much carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen; fats so and so much nitrogen, and so on; that
the various “salts” man consumes are composed of
what nowadays are called the chemical elements; and finally
that the amounts of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so forth,
that man needs can be calculated. The modern theory of
nutrition is arrived at in this way. It is exactly as though
someone wanting to know how a watch comes into existence were
first to ascertain how gold is produced up to the moment
when it is delivered to the watchmaker or how the glass for the
watch is produced, and so on, with other parts of the
watch. Such a person insists on getting to know the parts but
never on knowing what the watchmaker does with them. In all
eternity he will never really know anything about the watch. He
may be well informed about the glass, the hands, the materials
of which the watch is made, but he knows nothing about the
watch itself. The same sort of thing is true if, regarding
human nutrition, a person limits himself to the knowledge that
the fats are constituted of such and such chemical elements,
the carbohydrates of others, and so forth. We begin to know
something about nutrition only if we can enter in a living way
into the fact that what we eat in a potato, for example, is
related to the root. If we eat something related
to the root it is quite different from consuming in flour
something that is related to the seed as in rye,
corn, or wheat. What really matters is not how much
carbohydrate there is in a potato or a kernel of corn. Rather,
if I prepare a foodstuff from seeds, from corn, this foodstuff
has to be digested in the area of the human being that extends
to the lymph vessels and reaches the nerve-sense system in a
condition in which it can provide the foundation for thinking.
When I eat a potato, which is related to the root, it is not
the human digestive tract or the lymphatic system that reduces
the potato to a state where it can be assimilated by the human
body. No, here the midbrain is required, and when we eat
potatoes the task of digestion is imposed upon the midbrain.
When we eat a different kind of food this burden is not
present. If we eat potatoes in excess, we impose upon the
midbrain the task of the primary digestion; that is to say, we
undermine the real function of the midbrain in relation
to the nerve-sense system, which is to permeate thoughts with
feeling [Gemüt]. We
thus thrust our thinking into the forebrain, where it becomes
intellectual and to some extent actually animal-like.
The
essential point is not whether a potato, or cabbage, or
corn, is composed of such and such a percentage of
carbohydrates. For a true physiology of nutrition all
that is irrelevant. What we really need to know is how these
things actually work within the human being. If we wish
to develop a living grasp of what man needs today, we have the
task of freeing ourselves from all these things that can never
give us a true knowledge of man. The way we talk about nature
nowadays not only is misleading: it leads us straight into
emptiness of thought, emptiness of feeling.
Now
you are all aware that there is a well-known process in the
human being by means of which carbon combines with oxygen so
that carbon dioxide is produced, that is, the mixture of
carbon and oxygen that we exhale. You will often hear this
process talked about as if it were a sort of inner burning, the
same sort of thing as when a candle burns. There, too, carbon
combines with oxygen, but to talk in this way is about as
intelligent as to ask why the human being needs two lungs; we
might just as well put two stones into him, two inorganic
objects. If we mentally transfer into the human being the outer
process of burning, we think in the same way as we would if we
viewed the lungs as two stones. The burning that takes place
outwardly in connection with oxygen is a dead burning, an
inorganic burning. What takes place in the human being is
a living burning, permeated with soul. Any process that takes
place outside in nature changes when it occurs in the human
being; in the human being it is permeated with soul; it is
spiritual. What carbon together with oxygen does within
the human organism bears the same relation to what happens
outside as the living lungs bear to two stones. It is more
important to guide one's whole life of feeling in this
direction than to ponder over these things; then in all realms
of the life of soul one would come to a direct experience of
nature that could truly guide one from nature to the human
being. Nowadays people remain with nature outside and do not at
all reach the human being.
You
will discover that if you speak to children with this kind of
feeling and attitude [Gesinnung], they will
understand the most difficult things as they need to be
understood in their particular age. If you rely on the accursed
textbooks that are so popular, the children really understand
nothing; you torment the children, bore them, call forth their
scorn. What you must do is to create a relationship to the
world in yourselves that is both living and true to reality.
That, above all, is what the teacher needs. I would like to
emphasize strongly at the beginning that the teacher should
strive continually to bring to life in himself what in the
course of civilization has become dead. One of the chief tasks
in Waldorf education is to bring life to knowledge and to feel
a kind of repugnance for the way in which things are presented
nowadays in so-called scientific textbooks. After having
conquered this stage of repugnance, we should be able to
develop what in reality lives in ourselves and that passes over
to the children in a living way. We must begin at this point
with ourselves and then look at nature itself in this way. A
good deal of courage is needed, because much of what is true is
regarded nowadays as sheer madness. Everything possible should
be done to develop this courage.
Think of a butterfly. It lays an egg, the caterpillar crawls
out and spins its cocoon, becoming a chrysalis, and finally the
butterfly flies out of the chrysalis. These things are
described in the textbooks, but how? Without any consciousness
whatever of the wonderful mystery that really lies here. The
butterfly lays an egg, but it is essential that this egg be
laid at the proper time of year and that it be receptive to
everything that works as the earthy, as the solid or
solid-fluid quality in nature. The most essential thing for the
development of the egg is the “salty”
element. Then comes the time when in addition to the earthy
element, the fluid, and with the fluid the etheric, takes over.
The fluid element, which becomes permeated with the etheric,
passes over into the development of the caterpillar that
crawls out of the egg. When we have the egg, we think primarily
of the earth with the physical element. When we have the
caterpillar that crawls out of the egg we see its shape. What
crawls out is a being actually permeated with the etheric,
fluid-watery element, and that is what makes the
caterpillar into a caterpillar.
Now
the caterpillar must develop its being in the air; the most
important thing now for the caterpillar is that it come in
contact with the light, so that it actually lives in the
light-permeated air but at the same time expresses an
inner relationship to the astral and, with this relationship to
astrality, absorbs light. It is essential for the caterpillar
to be exposed through its sensory system to the rays of
the sun, to the radiating sun with its light. Next you see in
the caterpillar what can be perceived in its most extreme
form when you lie in bed with the lights still burning, and
moths fly toward the light. There you have the apparently
inexplicable urge of the moth to sacrifice itself. We shall
hear why. The moth dashes into the light and is burnt up.
Caterpillars have the same urge regarding the radiating light,
but they are organized in such a way that they cannot hurl
themselves into the sun. The moth can hurl itself into the
light. The caterpillar has the same urge to give itself up to
the light but cannot do so, for the sun is a long way off. The
caterpillar develops this urge, goes out of itself, passes into
the radiating light, gives itself up, spinning physical
material out of its own body into the rays of the sun. The
caterpillar sacrifices itself to the rays of the sun; it
desires to destroy itself, but all destruction is birth.
It spins its sheath during the day in the direction of the
sun's rays and, when it rests at night, what has been spun
hardens, so that these threads are spun rhythmically, day and
night. These threads that the caterpillar spins are
materialized, spun light.
Out
of the threads that the light has formed, that it has
materialized, the caterpillar spins its chrysalis, it passes
wholly into the light. The light itself is the cause of the
spinning of the chrysalis. The caterpillar cannot hurl itself
into the light but gives itself up to it, creating the chamber
in which the light is enclosed. The chrysalis is created from
above downward in accordance with the laws of form of the
primal wisdom. The butterfly is formed after the caterpillar
has prepared the secluded chamber for the light. There you have
the whole process from the egg to the brilliantly colored
butterfly, which is born out of the light, as all colors are
born out of the light. The whole process is born out of
the cosmos.
If
the process that we see extended into a fourfoldness —
egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly — is in any way
condensed, then the whole is changed. When the process occurs
inwardly within the animal element, what remains is a being
created out of the light. You see, the only way in which we can
really get to the essence of the matter is to picture
[vorstellen] the process artistically. It
is impossible to picture this process whereby the butterfly
forms itself from the chrysalis and is born out of the light
unless we picture it artistically. If you picture the
process in accordance with reality, you will find yourselves in
a world of wonderful artistry. Just try for yourselves,
and see how you receive an entirely different consciousness if
you know something in this way. It is a consciousness entirely
different from what you experience if you know something
in the modern, outer way, which really gives no knowledge at
all. Every detail becomes interesting if you allow yourselves,
with soul and body, to grow together with the cosmos in
its work of artistic creation.
Again, look at a tadpole with its resemblance to a fish; it
breathes with gills and has a fish-like tail to swim with. The
creature lives wholly in the watery element, the
watery-earthly element. Then the tadpole develops into a frog.
What happens? The blood vessels leading into the gills wither
away, and the whole blood system is rounded off inwardly.
Through this rounding off, the lung arises. The veins
leading to the fishlike tail also wither away, but others
elongate into legs so that the frog can hop about on land. This
wonderful transformation of a system of blood vessels that at
first feeds the gills and tail, this extraordinarily artistic
transformation into lungs and limbs, is a truly marvelous
process. How is it brought about? The first system of
blood vessels, which feeds the gills and tail, is produced by
the earthly-watery element; the second is produced by the
watery-airy element that is permeated glitteringly with
light.
You
can learn to understand how the elements work together, but
work together in an artistic way. If you reach
this sort of understanding of the world of nature, you simply
cannot help feeling as if you possessed the creative powers
within yourselves. You cannot possibly be like most people
nowadays when they study modern science. They are really not
fully human. They just sit with their heads unhappily in their
hands and strain their brains; study exhausts them. This is all
unnatural; it is really nonsensical. It is just as if eating
were to make us tired — but that happens only when
we eat too much. Surely it is impossible to be wearied by
anything that is so intimately bound up with man as this
living-together of nature, spirit, and soul. Yet I have known
many people who have been keen students, have written books,
but who suffered from anæmia of the brain. It is really
the same sort of thing as when a person suffers from
anæmia in some other part of the organism. No one can
suffer from anæmia of the brain who sees things in the way
I have described it, in their true relation to reality. This is
something that brings us to life inwardly, which is what
we need above all else in our work as teachers. We must relate
ourselves directly to life, and anything we are going to
introduce in our teaching in school should sustain and uphold
us inwardly, should truly enliven us. It is for this reason
that no true teaching can ever be boring. How could it be? One
might as well expect children to find eating and drinking
boring, which usually does not happen unless a child is ill. If
our teaching is boring there must be something wrong with it,
and we ought to ask ourselves in every case (unless we
are dealing with a really psychopathic child) what it is that
is lacking in us when our teaching bores the children.
These are things that really matter, and we must realize, my
dear friends, that we should neglect no single opportunity of
quickening the inner life of soul and spirit. Otherwise we
cannot teach. However erudite we may be, we cannot be
good teachers. This is connected with what I described as our
task to bring about the synthesis of what in successive stages
of world evolution was separate: the gymnast, the
rhetorician, and the professor. It is especially
necessary today that we not allow the last relics that
still live in the genius of our language, which can have an
effect upon our whole human nature, to vanish, but that we try
to bring a musical, sculptural-painterly quality into speech,
so that what comes to expression in speech may again work back
upon us. We therefore should make it one of the primary demands
on ourselves never to speak in a slovenly way in the school but
really to form and mold our speech so that as teachers our
speech has something artistic about it. This may require some
exertion, but it is of enormous significance. If it is
achieved, there may flow out from the school an impulse
for a revival, a renewal of civilization through the synthesis
of gymnast, rhetorician, and professor. We must overcome the
professorial quality — the learned knowledge,
intellectual knowledge — which at the present time
is the most disastrous of the three in all education. We
can achieve something with children only by being human beings,
not merely by being able to think.
This is the introduction I wished to give you today. I will add
something in later talks about matters that fundamentally
concern the teacher himself, for the educational problem is in
many ways a problem of those who are actually teachers.
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