LECTURE 4
15th August,
1924
I have shown
you how between the change of teeth and the ninth or tenth year you
should teach with descriptive, imaginative pictures, for what the
children then receive from you will live on in their minds and souls
as a natural development, right through their whole lives.
This is
of course only possible if the feelings and ideas one awakens are not
dead but living. To do this you must first of all yourselves acquire
a feeling for the inward life of the soul. A teacher or educator must
be patient with his own self-education, with the awakening of
something in the soul which may indeed sprout and grow. You may then
be able to make the most wonderful discoveries, but if this is to be
so you must not lose courage in your first endeavours.
For you
see, whenever a man undertakes an activity of a spiritual nature, he
must always be able to bear being clumsy and awkward. A man who
cannot endure being clumsy and doing things stupidly and imperfectly
at first, will never really be able to do them perfectly in the end
out of his own inner self. And especially in education we must first
of all kindle in our own souls what we then have to work out for
ourselves; but first it must be enkindled in the soul. If once or
twice we have succeeded in thinking out a pictorial presentation of a
lesson which we see impresses the children, then we shall make a
remarkable discovery about ourselves. We shall see that it becomes
more and more easy for us to invent such pictures, that by degrees we
become inventive people in a way we had never dreamt of. But for this
you must have the courage to be very far from perfect to begin
with.
Perhaps
you will say you ought never to be a teacher if you have to appear
before the children in this awkward manner. But here indeed the
Anthroposophical outlook must help you along. You must say to
yourself: Something is leading me karmically to the children so that
I can be with them as a teacher though I am still awkward and clumsy.
And those before whom it behoves me not to appear clumsy and awkward
— these children I shall only meet in later years, again
through the workings of Karma. [Dr. Steiner retained
the ancient oriental word “Karma” in speaking of the
working of human destiny in repeated lives on earth. See Rudolf
Steiner: Theosophy, chap. II.] The teacher or educator must thus take up his
life courageously, for in fact the whole question of education is not
a question of the teachers at all but of the children.
Let me
therefore give you an example of something which can sink into the
child's soul so that it grows with his growth, something which one
can come back to in later years and make use of to arouse certain
feelings within him. Nothing is more useful and fruitful in teaching
than to give the children something in picture form between the
seventh and eighth years, and later, perhaps in the fourteenth and
fifteenth years, to come back to it again in some way or other. Just
for this reason we try to let the children in the Waldorf School
remain as long as possible with one teacher. When they come to school
at seven years of age the children are given over to a teacher who
then takes his class up the school as far as he can, for it is good
that things which at one time were given to the child in germ can
again and again furnish the content of the methods employed in his
education.
Now
suppose for instance that we tell an imaginative story to a child of
seven or eight. He does not need to understand all at once the
pictures which the story contains; why that is I will describe later.
All that matters is that the child takes delight in the story because
it is presented with a certain grace and charm. Suppose I were to
tell the following story: Once upon a time in a wood where the sun
peeped through the branches there lived a violet, a very modest
violet under a tree with big leaves. And the violet was able to look
through an opening at the top of the tree. As she looked through this
broad opening in the tree top the violet saw the blue sky. The little
violet saw the blue sky for the first time on this morning, because
she had only just blossomed. Now the violet was frightened when she
saw the blue sky — indeed she was overcome with fear, but she
did not yet know why she felt such great fear. Then a dog ran by, not
a good dog, a rather bad snappy dog. And the violet said to the dog:
“Tell me, what is that up there, that is blue like me?”
For the sky also was blue just as the violet was. And the dog in his
wickedness said: “Oh, that is a great giant violet like you and
this great violet has grown so big that it can crush you.” Then
the violet was more frightened than ever, because she believed that
the violet up in the sky had got so big so that it could crush her.
And the violet folded her little petals together and did not want to
look up to the great big violet any more, but hid herself under a big
leaf which a puff of wind had just blown down from the tree. There
she stayed all day long, hiding in her fear from the great big
sky-violet.
When
morning came the violet had not slept all night, for she had spent
the night wondering what to think of the great blue sky-violet who
was said to be coming to crush her. And every moment she was
expecting the first blow to come. But it did not come. In the morning
the little violet crept out, as she was not in the least tired, for
all night long she had only been thinking, and she was fresh and not
tired (violets are tired when they sleep, they are not tired when
they don't sleep!) and the first thing that the little violet saw was
the rising sun and the rosy dawn. And when the violet saw the rosy
dawn she had no fear. It made her glad at heart and happy to see the
dawn. As the dawn faded the pale blue sky gradually appeared again
and became bluer and bluer all the time, and the little violet
thought again of what the dog had said, that that was a great big
violet which would come and crush her.
At that
moment a lamb came by and the little violet again felt she must ask
what that thing above her could be. “What is that up
there?” asked the violet, and the lamb said, “That is a
great big violet, blue like yourself.” Then the violet began to
be afraid again and thought she would only hear from the lamb what
the wicked dog had told her. But the lamb was good and gentle, and
because he had such good gentle eyes, the violet asked again:
“Dear lamb, do tell me, will the great big violet up there come
and crush me?” “Oh no,” answered the lamb,
“it will not crush you, that is a great big violet, and his
love is much greater than your own love, even as he is much more blue
than you are in your little blue form.” And the violet
understood at once that there was a great big violet who would not
crush her, but who was so blue in order that he might have more love,
and that the big violet would protect the little violet from
everything in the world which might hurt her. Then the little violet
felt so happy, because what she saw as blue in the great sky-violet
appeared to her as Divine Love, which was streaming towards her from
all sides. And the little violet looked up all the time as if she
wished to pray to the God of the violets.
Now if
you tell the children a story of this kind they will most certainly
listen, for they always listen to such things; but you must tell it
in the right mood, so that when the children have heard the story
they somehow feel the need to live with it and turn it over inwardly
in their souls. This is very important, and it all depends on whether
the teacher is able to keep discipline in the class through his own
feeling.
That is
why when we speak of such things as I have just mentioned, we must
also consider this question of keeping discipline. We once had a
teacher in the Waldorf School, for instance, who could tell the most
wonderful stories, but he did not make such an impression upon the
children that they looked up to him with unquestioned love. What was
the result? When the first thrilling story had been told the children
immediately wanted a second. The teacher yielded to this wish and
prepared a second. Then they immediately wanted a third, and the
teacher gave in again and prepared a third story for them. And at
last it came about that after a time this teacher simply could not
prepare enough stories. But we must not be continually pumping into
the children like a steam pump; there must be a variation, as we
shall hear in a moment, for now we must go further and let the
children ask questions; we should be able to see from the face and
gestures of a child that he wants to ask a question. We let him ask
it, and then talk it over with him in connection with the story that
has just been related.
Thus a
little child will probably ask: “But why did the dog give such
a horrid answer?” and then in a simple childlike way you will
be able to show him that a dog is a creature whose task is to watch,
who has to bring fear to people, who is accustomed to make people
afraid of him, and you will be able to explain why the dog gave that
answer.
You can
also explain to the children why the lamb gave the answer that he
did. After telling the above story you can go on talking to the
children like this for some time. Then you will find that one
question leads to another and eventually the children will bring up
every imaginable kind of question. Your task in all this is really to
bring into the class the unquestioned authority about which we have
still much to say. Otherwise it will happen that whilst you are
speaking to one child the others begin to play pranks and to be up to
all sorts of mischief. And if you are then forced to turn round and
give a reprimand, you are lost! Especially with the little children
one must have the gift of letting a great many things pass
unnoticed.
Once for
example I greatly admired the way one of our teachers handled a
situation. A few years ago he had in his class a regular rascal (who
has now improved very much). And lo and behold, while the teacher was
doing something with one of the children in the front row, the boy
leapt out of his seat and gave him a punch from behind. Now if the
teacher had made a great fuss the boy would have gone on being
naughty, but he simply took no notice at all. On certain occasions it
is best to take no notice, but to go on working with the child in a
positive way. As a general rule it is very bad indeed to take notice
of something that is negative.
If you
cannot keep order in your class, if you have not this unquestioned
authority (how this is to be acquired I shall speak of later), then
the result will be just as it was in the other case, when the teacher
in question would tell one story after another and the children were
always in a state of tension. But the trouble was that it was a state
of tension which could not be relaxed, for whenever the teacher
wanted to pass on to something else and to relax the tension (which
must be done if the children are not eventually to become bundles of
nerves), then one child left his seat and began to play, the next
also got up and began to sing, a third did some Eurythmy, a fourth
hit his neighbour and another rushed out of the room, and so there
was such confusion that it was impossible to bring them together
again to hear the next thrilling story.
Your
ability to deal with all that happens in the classroom, the good as
well as the bad, will depend on your own mood of soul. You can
experience the strangest things in this connection, and it is mainly
a question of whether the teacher has sufficient confidence in
himself or not.
The
teacher must come into his class in a mood of mind and soul that can
really find its way into the children's hearts. This can only be
attained by knowing your children. You will find that you can acquire
the capacity to do this in a comparatively short time, even if you
have fifty or more children in the class; you can get to know them
all and come to have a picture of them in your mind. You will know
the temperament of each one, his special gifts, his outward
appearance and so on.
In our
teachers' meetings, which are the heart of the whole school life, the
single individualities of the children are carefully discussed, and
what the teachers themselves learn from their meetings, week by week,
is derived first and foremost from this consideration of the
children's individualities. This is the way in which the teachers may
perfect themselves. The child presents a whole series of riddles, and
out of the solving of these riddles there will grow the feelings
which one must carry with one into the class. That is how it comes
about that when, as is sometimes the case, a teacher is not himself
inwardly permeated by what lives in the children, then they
immediately get up to mischief and begin to fight when the lesson has
hardly begun. (I know things are better here but I am talking of
conditions in Central Europe.) This can easily happen, but it is then
impossible to go on with a teacher like this and you have to get
another in his place. With the new teacher the whole class is a model
of perfection from the first day!
These
things may easily come within your experience; it simply depends on
whether the teacher's character is such that he is minded to let the
whole group of his children with all their peculiarities pass before
him in meditation every morning. You will say that this would take a
whole hour; this is not so, for if it were to take an hour one could
not do it, but if it takes ten minutes or a quarter of an hour it can
be done. But the teacher must gradually develop an inward perception
of the child's mind and soul, for it is this which will enable him to
see at once what is going on in the class.
To get
the right atmosphere for this pictorial story-telling you must above
all have a good understanding of the temperaments of the children.
This is why the treatment of children according to temperament has
such an important place in teaching. And you will find that the best
way is to begin by seating the children of the same temperament
together. In the first place the teacher has a more comprehensive
view if he knows that over there he has the cholerics, there the
melancholics, and here the sanguines. This will give him a point of
vantage from which he may get to know the whole class.
The very
fact that you do this, that you study the child and seat him
according to his temperament, means that you have done something to
yourself that will help you to keep the necessary unquestioned
authority in the class. These things usually come from sources one
least expects. Every teacher and educator must work upon himself
inwardly.
If you
put the phlegmatics together they will mutually correct each other,
for they will be so bored by one another that they will develop a
certain antipathy to their own phlegma, and it will get better and
better all the time. The cholerics hit and smack each other and
finally they get tired of the blows they get from the other
cholerics; and so the children of each temperament rub each other's
corners off extraordinarily well when they sit together. But the
teacher himself when he speaks to the children, for instance when he
is talking over with them the story which has just been given, must
develop within himself as a matter of course the instinctive gift of
treating the child according to his temperament. Let us say that I
have a phlegmatic child; if I wish to talk over with such a child a
story like the one I have told, I must treat him with an even greater
phlegma than he has himself. With a sanguine child who is always
flitting from one impression to another and cannot hold on to any of
them, I must try to pass from one impression to the next even more
quickly than the child himself does.
With a
choleric child you must try to teach him things in a quick emphatic
way so that you yourself become choleric, and you will see how in
face of the teacher's choler his own choleric propensities become
repugnant to him. Like must be treated with like, so long as you do
not make yourself ridiculous. Thus you will gradually be able to
create an atmosphere in which a story like this is not merely related
but can be spoken about afterwards.
But you
must speak about it before you let the children retell the story. The
very worst method is to tell a story and then to say: “Now
Edith Miller, you come out and retell it.” There is no sense in
this; it only has meaning if you talk about it first for a time,
either cleverly or foolishly; (you need not always be clever in your
classes; you can sometimes be quite foolish, and at first you will
mostly be foolish). In this way the child makes the thing his own,
and then if you like you can get him to tell the story again, but
this is of less importance for it is not indeed so essential that the
child should hold such a story in his memory; in fact, for the age of
which I am speaking, namely between the change of teeth and the ninth
or tenth year, this hardly comes in question at all. Let the child by
all means remember what he can, but what he has forgotten is of no
consequence. The training of memory can be accomplished in subjects
other than story-telling, as I shall have to show.
But now
let us consider the following question: Why did I choose a story with
this particular content? It was because the thought-pictures which
are given in this story can grow with the child. You have all kinds
of things in the story which you can come back to later. The violet
is afraid because she sees the great big violet above her in the sky.
You need not yet explain this to the little child, but later when you
are dealing with more complicated teaching matter, and the question
of fear comes up, you can recall this story. Things small and great
are contained in this story, for indeed things small and great are
repeatedly coming up again and again in life and working upon each
other. Later on then you can come back to this. The chief feature of
the early part of the story is the snappish advice given by the dog,
and later on the kind loving words of advice uttered by the lamb. And
when the child has come to treasure these things in his heart and has
grown older, how easily then you can lead on from the story you told
him before to thoughts about good and evil, and about such
contrasting feelings which are rooted in the human soul. And even
with a much older pupil you can go back to this simple child's story;
you can make it clear to him that we are often afraid of things
simply because we misunderstand them and because they have been
presented to us wrongly. This cleavage in the feeling life, which may
be spoken of later in connection with this or that lesson, can be
demonstrated in the most wonderful way if you come back to this story
in the later school years.
In the
Religion lessons too, which will only come later on, how well this
story can be used to show how the child develops religious feelings
through what is great, for the great is the protector of the small,
and one must develop true religious feeling by finding in oneself
those elements of greatness which have a protective impulse. The
little violet is a little blue being. The sky is a great blue being,
and therefore the sky is the great blue God of the violet.
This can
be made use of at various different stages in the Religion lessons.
What a beautiful analogy one can draw later on by showing how the
human heart itself is of God. One can then say to the child:
“Look, this great sky-violet, the god of the violets, is all
blue and stretches out in all directions. Now think of a little bit
cut out of it — that is the little violet. So God is as great
as the world-ocean. Your soul is a drop in this ocean of God. But as
the water of the sea, when it forms a drop, is the same water as the
great sea, so your soul is the same as the great God is, only it is
one little drop of it.”
If you
find the right pictures you can work with the child in this way all
through his early years, for you can come back to these pictures
again when the child is more mature. But the teacher himself must
find pleasure in this picture-making. And you will see that when, by
your own powers of invention, you have worked out a dozen of these
stories, then you simply cannot escape them; they come rushing in
upon you wherever you may be. For the human soul is like an
inexhaustible spring that can pour out its treasures unceasingly as
soon as the first impulse has been called forth. But people are so
indolent that they will not make the initial effort to bring forth
what is there in their souls.
We will
now consider another branch of this pictorial method of education.
What we must bear in mind is that with the very little child the
intellect, that in the adult has its own independent life, must not
yet really be cultivated, but all thinking should be developed in a
pictorial and imaginative way.
Now even
with children of about eight years of age you can quite well do
exercises of the following kind. It does not matter if they are
clumsy at first. For instance you draw this figure for the child (see
drawing a.) and you must try in all kinds of ways to get him to feel
in himself that this is not complete, that something is lacking. How
you do this will of course depend on the individuality of the child.
You will for instance say to hi: “Look, this goes down to here
(left half) but this only comes down to here (right half,
incomplete). But this doesn't look nice, coming right down to here
and the
other side
only so far.” Thus you will gradually get the child to complete
this figure; he will really get the feeling that the figure is not
finished, and must be completed; he will finally add this line to the
figure. I will draw it in red; the child could of course do it
equally well in white, but I am simply indicating in another colour
what has to be added. At first he will be extremely clumsy, but
gradually through balancing out the forms he will develop in himself
observation which is permeated with thought, and thinking which is
permeated with imaginative observation. His thinking will all be
imagery.
And when
I have succeeded in getting a few children in the class to complete
things in this simple way, I can then go further with them. I shall
draw some such figure as the following (see drawing b. left), and
after making the child feel that this complicated figure is
unfinished I shall induce him to put in what will make it complete
(right hand part of drawing). In this way I shall arouse in him a
feeling for form which will help him to experience symmetry and
harmony.
This can
be continued still further. I can for instance awaken in the child a
feeling for the inner laws governing this
figure (see
drawing c.). He will see that in one place the lines come together,
and in another they separate. This closing together and separating
again is something that I can easily bring to a child's
experience.
Then I
pass over to the next figure (see drawing d.). I make the curved
lines straight, with angles, and the child then has to make the inner
line correspond. It will be a difficult task with children of eight,
but, especially at this age, it is a wonderful achievement if one can
get them to do this with all sorts of figures, even if one has shown
it to them beforehand. You should get the children to work out the
inner lines for themselves; they must bear the same character as the
ones in the previous figure but consist only of straight lines and
angles.
This is
the way to inculcate in the child a real feeling for form, harmony,
symmetry, correspondence of lines and so on. And from this you can
pass over to a conception of how an object is reflected; if this, let
us say, is the surface of the water (see drawing e.), and here is
some object, you must arouse in the child's mind a picture of how it
will be in the reflection. In this manner you can lead the children
to perceive other examples of harmony to be found in the world.
You can
also help the child himself to become skilful and mobile in this
pictorial imaginative thinking by saying to him: “Touch your
right eye with your left hand! Touch your right eye with your right
hand! Touch your left eye with your right hand! Touch your left
shoulder with your right hand
from behind!
Touch your right shoulder with your left hand! Touch your left ear
with your right hand! Touch your left ear with your left hand! Touch
the big toe of your right foot with your right hand!” and so
on. You can thus make the child do all kinds of curious exercises,
for example, “Describe a circle with your right hand round the
left! Describe a circle with your left hand round the right! Describe
two circles cutting each other with both hands! Describe two circles
with one hand in one direction and with the other hand in the other
direction. Do it faster and faster. Now move the middle finger of
your right hand very quickly. Now the thumb, now the little
finger.”
So the
child can learn to do all kinds of exercises in a quick alert manner.
What is the result? If he does these exercises when he is about eight
years old, they will teach him how to think — to think for his
whole life. Learning to think directly through the head is not the
kind of thinking that will last him his life. He will become
“thought-tired” later on. But if, on the other hand, he
has to do actions with his own body which need great alertness in
carrying out, and which need to be thought over first, then later on
he will be wise and prudent in the affairs of his life, and there
will be a noticeable connection between the wisdom of such a man in
his thirty-fifth or thirty-sixth year and the exercises he did as a
child of six or seven. Thus it is that the different epochs of life
are connected with each other.
It is out
of such a knowledge of man that one must try to work out what one has
to bring into one's teaching.
Similarly
one can achieve certain harmonies in colour. Suppose we do an
exercise with the child by first of all painting something in red
•see drawing a.). Now we show him, by
arousing his
feeling for it, that next to this red surface a green surface would
be very harmonious. This of course must be carried out with paints,
then it is easier to see. Now you can try to explain to the child
that you are going to reverse the process. “I am going to put
the green in here inside (see drawing b.); what will you put round
it?” Then he will put red round it. By doing such things you
will gradually lead to a feeling for the harmony of colours. The
child comes to see that first I have a red surface here in the middle
and green round it (see former drawing), but if the red becomes
green, then the green must become red. It is of enormous importance
just at this age, towards the eighth year, to let this correspondence
of colour and form work upon the children.
Thus our
lessons must all be given a certain inner form, and if such a method
of teaching is to thrive, the one thing necessary is — to
express it negatively — to dispense with the usual timetable.
In the Waldorf School we have so-called “period teaching”
and not a fixed timetable. We take one subject for from four to six
weeks; the same subject is continued during that time. We do not have
from 8–9 Arithmetic; 9–10 Reading, 10–11 Writing,
but we take one subject which we pursue continuously in the Main
Lesson morning by morning for four weeks, and when the children have
gone sufficiently far with that subject we pass on to another. So
that we never alternate by having Arithmetic from 8–9 and
Reading 9–10, but we have Arithmetic alone for several weeks,
then another subject similarly, according to what it may happen to
be. There are, however, certain subjects which I shall deal with
later that require a regular weekly timetable. But, as a rule, in the
so-called “Main Lessons” we keep very strictly to the
method of teaching in periods. During each period we take only one
subject but these lessons can include other topics related to it.
We
thereby save the children from what can work such harm in their soul
life, namely that in one lesson they have to absorb what is then
blotted out in the lesson immediately following. The only way to save
them from this is to introduce period teaching.
Many will
no doubt object that in this kind of teaching the children will
forget what they have learnt. This only applies to certain special
subjects, e.g. Arithmetic, and can be corrected by frequent little
recapitulations. This question of forgetting is of very little
account in most of the subjects, at any rate in comparison to the
enormous gain to the child if the concentration on one subject for a
certain period of time is adhered to.
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