LECTURE 2
13th August,
1924
I pointed
out yesterday how the child's development undergoes a radical change
with the loss of his first teeth. For in truth, what we call heredity
or inherited characteristics are only directly active during the
first epoch of life. It is however the case that during the first
seven years a second life organism is gradually built up in the
physical body, which is fashioned after the model of the inherited
organism. This second organism is, we may say, completed at the
changing of the teeth. If the individual who comes down out of the
spiritual pre-earthly world is weak, then this second life organism
is similar to the inherited one. If the individual is strong, then we
see how in the period between the change of teeth and puberty, from
seven years till about fourteen, a kind of victory is gradually
accomplished over the inherited characteristics. Children become
quite different and they even change in their outward bodily
form.
It is
specially interesting to follow the qualities of soul which now
reveal themselves in this second life epoch. In the first epoch,
before the change of teeth, we may describe the child as being wholly
“sense-organ.” You must take this quite literally: wholly
sense-organ.
Take for
example the human eye or ear. What is the characteristic of such a
sense-organ? The characteristic thing is that the sense-organ is
acutely sensitive to the impressions of the outer world. And if you
observe the eye you can certainly see what kind of process takes
place. The child during the first seven years is really completely
and wholly an eye. Now consider only this thought: in the eye a
picture is formed, an inverted picture, of every external object.
This is what ordinary Physics teaches everyone. That which is outside
in the world is to be found within the eye as a picture. Physics
stops here, but this picture-forming process is really only the
beginning of what one should know concerning the eye; it is the most
external physical fact.
But if
the physicist would look upon this picture with a finer sense of
observation, then he would see that it determines the course of the
circulation of the blood in the choroid. The whole choroid is
conditioned in its blood circulation by the nature of this picture
within the eye. The whole eye adjusts itself according to these
things. These are the finer processes that are not taken into
consideration by our ordinary Physics. But the child during the first
seven years is really an eye. If something takes place in the child's
environment, let us say, to take an extreme example, a fit of temper
when someone becomes furiously angry, then the whole child will have
a picture within him of this outburst of rage. The etheric body makes
a picture of it. From it something passes over into the entire
circulation of the blood and the metabolic system, something which is
related to this outburst of anger.
This is
so in the first seven years, and according to this the organism
adjusts itself. Naturally these are not crude happenings, they are
delicate processes. But if a child grows up in the proximity of an
angry father or a hot-tempered teacher, then the vascular system, the
blood vessels, will follow the line of the anger. The results of this
implanted tendency in the early years will then remain through the
whole of the rest of life.
These are
the things that matter most for the young child. What you say to him,
what you teach him, does not yet make any impression, except in so
far as he imitates what you say in his own speech. But it is what you
are that matters; if you are good this goodness will appear in
your gestures, and if you are evil or bad-tempered this also will
appear in your gestures — in short, everything that you do
yourself passes over into the child and pursues its way within him.
This is the essential point. The child is wholly sense-organ, and
reacts to all the impressions aroused in him by the people around
him. Therefore the essential thing is not to imagine that the child
can learn what is good or bad, that he can learn this or that, but to
know that everything that is done in his presence is transformed in
his childish organism into spirit, soul and body. Health for the
whole of life depends on how one conducts oneself in the presence of
the child. The inclinations which he develops depend on how one
behaves in his presence.
But all
the things that we are usually advised to do with Kindergarten
children are quite worthless. The things which are introduced as
Kindergarten education are usually extraordinarily
“clever.” One is, I might say, quite fascinated by the
cleverness of what has been thought out for Kindergartens in the
course of the nineteenth century. The children certainly learn a
great deal there, they almost learn to read. They are supplied with
letters of the alphabet which they have to fit into cut out letters
and such like. It all looks very clever and one can easily be tempted
io believe that it really is something suitable for children, but it
is of no use at all. It really has no value whatsoever, and the whole
soul of the child is spoilt by it. Even down into the body, right
down into physical health, the child is ruined. Through such
Kindergarten methods weaklings in body and soul are bred for later
life. [Translator's Note. In Germany the children remain in the “Kindergarten”
until their seventh year so that the above remarks apply to all
school life up to this time, (including, for instance, the
“Infants” Departments of State Schools in
England).]
On the
other hand, if we were simply to have the children there in the
Kindergarten and so conduct ourselves that they could imitate us, if
we were to do all kinds of things that the children could copy out of
their own inner impulse of soul, as they have been accustomed to do
in the pre-earthly existence, then indeed the children would become
like ourselves, but it is for us to see that we are worthy of this
imitation. This is what you must pay attention to during the first
seven years of life and not what you express outwardly in words as a
moral idea.
If you
make a surly face so that the child gets the impression you are a
grumpy person, this harms him for the rest of his life. This is why
it is so important, especially for little children, that as a teacher
one should enter very thoroughly into the observation of a human
being and human life. What kind of school plan you make is neither
here nor there; what matters is what sort of a person you are. In our
day it is easy enough to think out a curriculum, because everyone in
our age is now so clever. I am not saying this ironically; in our day
people really are clever. Whenever a few people get together and
decide that this or that must be done in education, something clever
always comes out of it. I have never known a stupid educational
programme; they are always very clever. But it is not a question of
having programmes of this kind. What matters is that we should have
people in the school who can work in the way I have indicated. We
must develop this way of thinking, for an immense amount depends upon
it, especially for that age or life epoch of the child in which he is
really entirely sense-organ.
Now when
the change of teeth is complete the child is no longer a sense-organ
in the same degree as previously. This already diminishes between the
third and fourth year, but before then the child has quite special
peculiarities of which one generally knows nothing whatever. When you
eat something sweet or sour you perceive it on the tongue and palate,
but when the child drinks milk he feels the taste of milk through his
whole body for he is also an organ of sense with regard to taste. He
tastes with his whole body; there are many remarkable instances of
this.
Children
take their cue from the grown-ups and therefore at fifteen, sixteen
or twenty they are, nowadays, already blasé and have lost their
freshness, but there are still children to be found who in their
early years are wholly sense-organ, though life is not easy for such.
I knew for example a small boy who on being given something to eat
that he knew he would enjoy, approached the delectable object not
only with those organs with which one generally approaches food, but
he steered towards it with his hands and feet; he was in fact wholly
an organ of taste. The remarkable thing is that in his ninth or tenth
year he became a splendid Eurythmist and developed a great
understanding for Eurythmy. So what he began by
“paddling” up to his food as a little child was developed
further in his will organs at a later age.
I do not
say these things jokingly but in order to give you examples of how to
observe. You very rarely hear people relating such things as these,
but they are happening every moment. People fail to perceive these
characteristic phenomena of life and only think out how to educate
the young instead of observing life itself.
Life is
interesting in every detail, from morning till evening; the smallest
things are interesting. Notice, for instance, how two people take a
pear from a fruit bowl. No two people take the pear in the same way;
it is always different. The whole character of a person is expressed
in the way he takes the pear from the fruit dish and puts it on his
plate, or straight into his mouth as the case may be.
If people
would only cultivate more power of observation of this kind, the
terrible things would not develop in schools which one unfortunately
so often sees today. One scarcely sees a child now who holds his pen
or pencil correctly. Most children hold them wrongly, and this is
because we do not know how to observe properly. This is a very
difficult thing to do, and it is not easy in the Waldorf School
either. One frequently enters a class where drastic changes are
needed in the way the children hold their pencils or pens. You must
never forget that the human being is a whole, and as such he must
acquire dexterity in all directions. Therefore what the teacher needs
is observation of life down to the minutest details.
And if
you are specially desirous of having formulated axioms, then take
this as the first principle of a real art of education. You must be
able to observe life in all its manifestations.
One can
never learn enough in this direction. Look at the children from
behind, for instance. Some walk by planting the whole foot on the
ground, others trip along on their toes, and there can be every kind
of differentiation between these two extremes. Yes indeed, to educate
a child one must know quite precisely how he walks. For the child who
treads on his heels shows in this one small characteristic of his
physical body that he was very firmly planted in life in his former
incarnation, that he was interested in everything in his former earth
life. In such a case you must draw as much as possible out of the
child himself, for there are many things hidden away in such children
who walk strongly on their heels. On the other hand the children who
trip along, who scarcely use their heels in walking, have gone
through their former earth life in a superficial way. You will not be
able to get much out of these children, but when you are with them
you must make a point of doing a great many things yourself that they
can copy.
In this
kind of way you should experience the changing of the teeth through
careful observation. The fact that the child was previously wholly
sense-organ now enables him to develop above all the gift of fantasy
and symbolism. And one muss reckon with this even in play. Our
materialistic age sins terribly against it. Take for example the
so-called beautiful dolls that are so often given to children
nowadays. They have such beautifully formed faces, wonderfully
painted cheeks, and even eyes with which they can go to sleep when
laid down, real hair and goodness knows what all! But with this the
fantasy of the child is killed, for it leaves nothing to his
imagination and the child can take no great pleasure in it. But if
you make a doll out of a serviette or a handkerchief with two ink
spots for eyes, a dab of ink for a mouth, and some sort of arms, then
the child can add a great deal to it with his imagination.
It is
particularly good for a child when he can add as much as possible to
his playthings with his own fantasy, when he can develop a
symbolising activity. Children should have as few things as possible
that are well finished and complete and what people call
“beautiful.” For the beauty of such a doll that I have
described above with real hair and so on, is only a conventional
beauty. In truth it is horribly ugly because it is so inartistic.
Never
forget that in the period round about the change of teeth the child
passes over into the age of imagination and fantasy. It is not the
intellect but fantasy which fills his life at this age. You as
teachers must also be able to develop this life of fantasy, for those
who bear a true knowledge of the human being in their souls are able
to do this. It is indeed so that a true knowledge of man loosens and
releases the inner life of soul and brings a smile to the face. Sour
and grumpy faces come only from lack of knowledge. Certainly one can
have a diseased organ which leaves traces of illness on the face;
this does not matter, for the child takes no account of these things,
but if the inner nature of a person is filled with a living knowledge
of what man is, this will be expressed in his face, and this it is
that can make him a really good teacher.
And so
between the change of teeth and puberty you must educate out of the
very essence of imagination. For the quality that makes a child under
seven so wholly into a sense-organ now becomes more inward; it enters
the soul life. The sense-organs do not think; they perceive pictures,
or rather they form pictures from the external objects. And even when
the child's sense experiences have already a quality of soul, it is
not a thought that emerges but an image, albeit a soul image, an
imaginative picture. Therefore in your teaching you must work in
pictures, in images.
Now
we can work least of all in pictures if we are teaching the child
something that is really quite foreign to him. For example, the
calligraphy of today is quite foreign to the child whether in the
written or printed letters. He has no relation whatever to this thing
which is called an “A.” Why should he have a relation to
an “A”? Why should he be interested in an
“L”? These are quite foreign to him, this
“A,” this “L.” Nevertheless when the child
comes to school we take him into the classroom and start to teach him
these things. The result is that he feels no contact with what he has
to do. And if we teach him this before the change of teeth and set
him to stick letters into cut-out holes, for example, then we are
giving him things that lie right outside his nature and to which he
has not the slightest relationship.
But
what he does possess is an artistic sense, a faculty for creating
imaginative pictures. It is to this that we must appeal, to this we
must turn. We should avoid a direct approach to the conventional
letters of the alphabet which are used in the writing and printing of
civilised man. Rather should we lead the children, in a vivid and
imaginative way, through the various stages which man himself has
passed through in the history of civilisation.
In former
times there was picture writing; that is to say, people painted
something on the page which reminded them of the object. We do not
need to study the history of civilisation, but we can show the child
the meaning and spirit of what man wanted to express in picture
writing. Then he will feel at home in his lessons.
For
example: Let us take the word “Mund” — English “mouth.” Get the child to
draw a mouth, or rather paint it. Let him put on dabs of red colour
and then tell him to pronounce the word; you can say to him: don't
pronounce the whole word but begin only with M; and now we can form
the M out of the upper lip (see drawing). If you follow
this
process you
can get your M out of the mouth which we first painted.
This is
how writing really originated, only today it is difficult to
recognise from the words themselves that the letters were once
pictures, because the words have all been subject to change in the
course of the evolution of speech. Originally each sound had its own
image and each picture could have but one meaning.
You do
not need to go back to these original characters, but you can invent
ways and means of your own. The teacher must be inventive, he must
create out of the spirit of the thing. Let us take the word
“fish.” Let the child draw or paint some kind of fish.
Let him say the beginning of the word: “F,” and you can
gradually get the F out of the picture (see drawing).
And thus,
if you are inventive, you can find in point of fact, pictures for all
the consonants. They can be worked out from a kind of
painting-drawing, or drawing-painting. This is more awkward to deal
with than the methods of today. For it is of course essential that
after the children have been doing
this
painting for an hour or two you have to clear it all away. But this
just has to be so, there is nothing else to be done.
From this
you can see how the letters can be developed out of pictures and the
pictures again directly out of life. This is the way you must do it.
On no account should you teach reading first, but proceeding from
your drawing-painting and painting-drawing, you allow the letters to
arise out of these, and then you can pass over to reading.
If you
look around you will find plenty of objects which you can use to
develop the consonants in this way. All the consonants can be
developed from the initial letters of the words describing these
objects.
It is not
so easy for the vowels. But perhaps for the vowels the following is
possible. Suppose you say to the child: “Look at the beautiful
sun! You must really admire it; stand like this so that you can look
up and admire the glorious sun.” The child stands, looks up and
then expresses its wonder thus: Ah! Then you paint this gesture and
you actually have the Hebrew A, the sound Ah, the sound of wonder.
Now you only need to make it smaller and gradually turn it into the
letter A (see drawing).
And so if
you bring before the child something of an inner soul quality and
above all what is expressed in Eurythmy, letting him take up this
position or that, then you can develop the vowels also in the way I
have mentioned. Eurythmy will
be of very
great help to you because the sounds are already formed in the
Eurythmy gestures and movements. Think for instance of an O. One
embraces something lovingly. Out of this one can obtain the 0 (see
drawing). You can really get the vowels from the gesture, the
movement.
Thus you
must work out of observation and imagination, and the children will
then come to know the sounds and the letters from the things
themselves. You must start from the picture. The letter, as we know
it today in its finished form, has a history behind it. It is
something that has been simplified from a picture, but the kind of
magical signs of the printed letters of the present day no longer
tell us what the picture was like.
When the
Europeans, these “better men,” went to America at the
time when the “savages,” the Indians, were still there,
— even in the middle of the nineteenth century such things
happened — they showed these savages printed writing and the
Indians ran away from it because they thought the letters were little
devils. And they said: The Pale-faces, as the Indians called the
Europeans, communicate with each other by means of little devils,
little demons.
But this
is just what letters are for children. They mean nothing to them. The
child feels something demonic in the letters, and rightly so. They
have already become a means of magic because they are merely
signs.
You must
begin with the picture. That is not a magic sign but something real
and you must work from this.
People
will object that the children then learn to read and write too late.
This is only said because it is not known today how harmful it is
when the children learn to read and write too soon. It is a very bad
thing to be able to write early. Reading and Writing as we have them
today are really not suited to the human being till a later age, in
the eleventh or twelfth year, and the more one is blessed with not
being able to read and write well before this age, the better it is
for the later years of life. A child who cannot write properly at
thirteen or fourteen (I can speak out of my own experience because I
could not do it at that age) is not so hindered for later spiritual
development as one who early, at seven or eight years, can already
read and write perfectly. These are things which the teacher must
notice.
Naturally
one will not be able to proceed as one really should today because
the children have to pass from your Independent School into public
life. But a very great deal can be done nevertheless when one knows
these things. It is a question of knowledge. And your knowledge must
show you, above all, that it is quite wrong to teach reading before
writing, for in writing, especially if it is developed from the
painting-drawing, drawing-painting, that I have spoken of, the whole
human being is active. The fingers take part, the position of the
body, the whole man is engaged. In reading only the head is occupied
and anything which only occupies a part of the organism and leaves
the remaining parts impassive should be taught as late as possible.
The most important thing is first to bring the whole being into
movement, and later on the single parts.
Naturally
if you want to work in this way you cannot expect to be given
instructions for all the little details, but only an indication of
the path to be followed. Therefore just in this method of education
which arises out of Anthroposophy you can build on nothing else but
absolute freedom, though this freedom must include the free creative
fancy of the teacher and educator.
In the
Waldorf School we have been blessed with what I might call a very
questionable success. We began with one hundred and thirty to one
hundred and forty pupils; but these pupils came from the industrial
works of Emil Molt, so they were at that time to a certain extent
“compulsory” children though we had some children from
anthroposophical families besides. [In 1919 the first
Rudolf Steiner School was founded by Emil Molt, Director of the
Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory, Stuttgart. The first pupils were
all children of the factory workers.] In the short time of its
existence the Waldorf School has grown so big that we have now more
than eight hundred children and between forty and fifty teachers.
This is a doubtful success because gradually it becomes impossible to
keep a clear view of the whole. From the arrangements of the Waldorf
School which I shall describe to you, you will soon see how difficult
it is to survey the whole; though I shall later indicate certain ways
of making this possible. We have had to form parallel classes; in the
case of the fifth and sixth there are three parallel classes: A, B
and C. These classes are still overfull and have more children than
the other classes in the school.
There is
therefore a teacher in Class A, another in Class B. Just imagine how
this would work out in a “proper” educational
establishment of today. You come into Class I A, where you find a
particular educational drill going on which is considered the best.
Now you go into Class I B. It could equally well be called
‘A,’ only that different children are sitting there, for
in both classes exactly the same thing goes on, because the
“right method” is used. This is of course all most
cleverly thought out: what is intellectual has but one meaning and it
cannot be otherwise.
With us
in the Waldorf School you find no such thing. You go into the first
Class A. There you see a teacher, man or woman, who is teaching
writing. The teacher lets the children make all kinds of forms, let
us say with string. They then go on to painting the forms and
gradually letters arise. A second teacher likes to do it differently.
If you go into Class B you find that this teacher is letting the
children “dance” the forms round the room, in order that
they may experience the forms of the letters in their own bodies.
Then she carries over these forms also into the letters themselves.
You would never find uniformity of teaching in Classes A, B and C.
The same things are taught but in completely different ways, for a
free creative fancy holds sway in the class. There are no prescribed
rules for teaching in the Waldorf School, but only one unifying
spirit that pervades the whole. It is very important that you should
realise this. The teacher is autonomous. Within this one unifying
spirit he can do entirely what he thinks right. You will say: Yes,
but if everyone can do as he likes, then the whole school will fall
into a chaotic condition. For in Class V A, there could be goodness
knows what kind of hocus-pocus going on, and in V B, you might find
them playing chess. But that is exactly what does not happen in the
Waldorf School, for though there is freedom everywhere you will find
in each class the spirit which is in accordance with the age of the
children.
If you
read the Seminar Course, you will see that you are allowed the
greatest liberty, and yet the teaching in each class is what is right
for that age [Just before the opening of the Waldorf
School, in 1919, Dr. Steiner gave three simultaneous courses of
lectures to the teachers two of which have been published in English
under the titles of Study of Man
and Practical Advice to
Teachers.] The strange thing is that no teacher has ever
opposed this. They all quite voluntarily accept this principle of a
unifying spirit in the work. No one opposes it or wants to have any
special arrangements made for himself. On the contrary, the wish is
often expressed by the teachers to have as many discussions as
possible in their meetings about what should be done in the various
classes.
Why does
no teacher object to the curriculum? The school has been going for
several years. Why do you think that all the teachers approve of the
curriculum? They do not find it at all unreasonable. They find it in
its very freedom excellent because it is bound up with real true
human knowledge.
And
just in such things as creating one's teaching matter out of fantasy
it can be seen that freedom must prevail in the school. Indeed it
does. Each of our teachers has the feeling that it is not only a
question of what he himself thinks out and discovers out of his own
fantasy, but when I sit with my Waldorf teachers in their meetings,
or when I go into the classes, I get more and more the impression
that when once the teachers are in their classrooms they actually
forget that a plan of teaching has previously been drawn up. In the
moment of teaching every teacher imagines that he himself is creating
the plan of work. This is the feeling I have when I go into the
classes.
Such is the result when real human knowledge lies at the
basis of the work. I have to tell you these details even though you
might think they were said out of vanity; indeed they are not said
out of vanity but that you may know how it is and then go and do
likewise; this will show you how what grows out of a true knowledge
of man can really enter into the child.
It
is on fantasy then, on imagination, that our teaching and education
is to be built. You must be quite clear that before the ninth or
tenth year the child does not know how to differentiate himself as an
ego from his surroundings. Out of a certain instinct the child has
long been accustomed to speak of himself as “P,” but in
truth he really feels himself within the whole world. He feels that
the whole world is connected with himself. But people have the most
fantastic ideas about this. They say of primitive races that their
feeling for the world is “animism,” that is, they treat
lifeless objects as though they were “ensouled,” and that
to understand a child you must imagine that he does the same as these
primitive peoples. When he knocks against a hard object he hits it
because he endows it with a quality of soul.
But
that is not at all true. In reality, the child does not
“ensoul” the object, but he does not yet distinguish
between the living and the lifeless. He considers everything as a
unity, and himself also as making up a unity with his surroundings.
Not until the age of nine or ten does the child really learn to
distinguish himself from his environment. This is something you must
take into consideration in the strictest sense if you wish to give
your teaching a proper basis.
Therefore it is important to speak of everything that is
around the child, plants, animals and even stones, in such a way that
all these things talk to each other, that they act among themselves
like human beings, that they tell each other things, that they love
and hate each other. You must learn to use anthropomorphism in the
most inventive ways and speak of all the plants and animals as though
they were human. You must not “ensoul” them out of a kind
of theory but simply treat them in the way which a child can grasp
when he is not yet able to distinguish between the lifeless and the
living. For as yet the child has no reason to think that the stone
has no soul, whereas the dog has a soul. The first difference he
notices is that the dog moves. But he does not ascribe the movement
to the fact that he has a soul. One can indeed treat all things that
feel and live as if they were people, thinking, feeling and speaking
to one another, as if they were persons with sympathy and antipathy
for each other. Therefore everything that one brings to a child at
this age must be given in the form of fairy tales, legends and
stories in which everything is endowed with feeling. The child
receives the very best foundation for his soul life when in this way
we nourish his instinctive soul qualities of fancy. This must be
borne in mind.
If you
fill the child with all kinds of intellectual teaching during this
age (and this will be the case if we do not transform into pictures
everything that we teach him) then later he will have to suffer the
effects in his blood vessels and in his circulation. We must consider
the child in body, soul and spirit as an absolute unity. This must be
said over and over again.
For
this task the teacher must have an artistic feeling in his soul, he
must be of an artistic disposition. For what works from teacher to
child is not only what one thinks out or what one can convey in
ideas, but, if I may express myself so, it is the imponderable
quality in life. A very great deal passes over from teacher to child
unconsciously. The teacher must be aware of this, above all when he
is telling fairy tales, stories or legends full of feeling. It very
often happens in our materialistic times that we notice how the
teacher looks upon what he is telling as childish. He is telling
something which he himself does not believe. And here Anthroposophy
finds its rightful place if it is to be the guide and leader of the
true knowledge of man. We become aware through Anthroposophy that we
can express a thing infinitely more fully and more richly if we
clothe it in pictures than if we put it into abstract ideas. A child
who is naturally healthy feels the necessity to express everything in
pictures and to receive everything also in picture form.
Remember how Goethe learnt to play the piano as a boy. He was
shown how he had to use the first finger, the second finger, and so
on; but he did not like this method, and this dry pedantic teacher of
his was repugnant to him. For Father Goethe was an old Philistine,
one of the old pedants of Frankfurt who naturally also engaged
Philistine teachers for preference, because they are the good ones,
as everyone knows. This kind of teaching was repugnant to the boy
Goethe, it was too abstract. So he invented for himself the
“Deuterling” (“the little
fellow who points”), not “Index finger,” that is
too abstract, but “Deuterling.”
[Translator's note: Compare
the old country names for the fingers referred to by Walter de la
Mare in Come
Hither p. 515,
e.g. Tom Thumbkin, Bess Bumpkin, Long Linkin, Bill Wilkin and Little
Dick.]
The
child wants an image and he wants to think of him- self as an image
too. It is just in these things that we see how the teacher needs to
use his fantasy, to be artistic, for then he will meet the child with
a truly “living” quality of soul. And this living quality
works upon the child in an imponderable way — imponderable in
the best sense.
Through Anthroposophy we ourselves learn once more to believe
in the legends, fairy tales and myths, for they express a higher
truth in imaginative pictures. And then our handling of these fairy
tales, legends and mythical stories will once more be filled with a
quality of soul. Then when we speak to the child, our very words,
permeated as they will be by our own belief in the tales, will flow
over to him and carry truth with them; truth will then flow from
teacher to child, whereas it is so often untruth that passes between
them. Untruth at once holds sway if the teacher says: the child is
stupid, I am clever, the child believes in fairy tales so I have to
tell them to him. It's the proper thing for him to hear them. When a
teacher speaks like this then an intellectual element immediately
enters into the relating of the stories.
But the
child, especially in the age between the change of teeth and puberty,
has a most sensitive feeling for whether the teacher is governed by
his fantasy or his intellect. The intellect has a destructive and
crippling effect on the child, but fantasy gives it life and
impulse.
It is
vital that we should make these fundamental thoughts our own. We will
speak of them in greater detail during the next few days, but there
is one more thing I should like to put before you in conclusion.
Something of very special importance happens to the child
between his ninth and tenth year. Speaking in an abstract way we can
say that he then learns to differentiate himself from his
environment; he feels himself as an “I,” and the
environment as something external which does not belong to this
“I” of his. But this is an abstract way of expressing it.
The reality is this, speaking of course in a general sense: the child
of this age approaches his much-loved teacher, be he man or woman,
with some problem or difficulty. In most cases he will not actually
speak of what is burdening his soul, but will say something
different. All the same one has to know that this really comes from
the innermost depths of his soul, and the teacher must then find the
right approach, the right answer. An enormous amount depends on this
for the whole future life of the child concerned. For you cannot work
with children of this age, as their teacher, unless you are yourself
the unquestioned authority, unless, that is, the child has the
feeling: this is true because you hold it to be true, this is
beautiful because you find it beautiful, and therefore point it out
to him, and this is good because you think it good. You must be for
the child the representative of the good, the true and the beautiful.
He must be drawn to truth, goodness and beauty simply because he is
drawn to you yourself.
And then
between the ninth and tenth year this feeling arises instinctively in
his subconsciousness: I get everything from my teacher, but where
does he get it from? What is behind him? The teacher need not enlarge
on this because if you go into definitions and explanations it can
only do harm. The important thing is to find a loving word, a word
filled with warmth of heart — or rather many words, for these
difficulties can go on for weeks and months — so that we can
avert this danger and preserve the feeling for authority in the
child. For he has now come to a crisis as regards the principle of
authority. If you are equal to the situation, and can preserve your
authority by the warmth of feeling with which you deal with these
particular difficulties, and by meeting the child with inner warmth,
sincerity and truth, then much will be gained. The child will retain
his belief in the teacher's authority, and that is a good thing for
his further education, but it is also essential that just at this age
of life between nine and ten the child's belief in a good person
should not waver. Were this to happen then the inner security which
should be his guide through life will totter and sway.
This is
of very great significance and must constantly be borne in mind. In
the handbooks on education we find all kinds of intricate details
laid down for the guidance of teachers, but it is of far greater
importance to know what happens at a certain point in the child's
life and how we must act with regard to it, so that through our
action we may radiate light on to his whole life.
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