Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 17 September 1922, Dornach

80. On Pedagogy II

Dear guests,

If knowledge of man is developed in the way that was expressed yesterday, that is, the education of the nascent human being, the gradual development of the human world according to body, soul and spirit, then the method of teaching and education is one that directly transcends into the practical.

If we just take the moment in human life that was emphasized yesterday as being of unique significance, the moment of the change of teeth around the age of seven, we can see how a certain instinct [underlies] the fact that the compulsory elementary school age once began with this period of life in the main. In this period, as I explained yesterday, a certain part of the human etheric body becomes free, emancipates itself from its commonality with physical human parts, and can be filled with the soul-spiritual aspects of the human being. One may judge man more spiritually, one may judge him more physically, one will always find that education, educational, instructive treatment has brought about such a transformation of human nature. It must be borne in mind that if the etheric body permeates the whole physical body in uniformity and the child is completely dependent on imitation before the change of teeth, then this is only an expression of the fact that during this time the whole activity, the whole organic life that takes place in the child, is actually a revelation. Imitation is something that happens in response to an external impression, which is followed by a characteristic inner impression. Yesterday I used the expression for this relationship: the child is actually a great sensory organ.

And then [we can also] look at it from a different angle and will then have to say: If you look at the child that has come into the world and compare it with all later states, you will find that at this age everything that happens inside the human being preferably emanates from the head. At first the head - like a wonderful inner practitioner - forms his brain; but then all other organs are also formed from the head. What today's physiology says in this direction is only a hint of what we need to know. But all that is said here is not brought forward by the physiologist of today, but is only continued in a certain appropriate way. It is as if all the impulses of human growth and also the finer regulation of human nutrition emanate from the head, especially at this age. Man can grow stronger or he can become weak by being treated in the right [or wrong] way. A human limb, as you can see from a working muscle, becomes strong when it is operated appropriately. At the marked age, the whole person should be recognized through the educational influence within [his physique], according to his physique.

There one must be able to become aware of the significance of every movement in the human being. One must be able to be aware of whether it is more meaningful, healthier, to let the child do exercises, speech exercises, which do not require meaningful significance, but rather a natural activity in which these or those letters play a prominent role. Such a relationship, which is expressed in the treatment of the child, must be developed for kindergarten, for example. And it is always painful to me that in Stuttgart in the Waldorf School, where things are also practically utilized that can flow from anthroposophical education, that they can only be started at compulsory school age, that a kindergarten cannot be there. It can't be there for the reason that the Stuttgart Waldorf School [doesn't] have such an abundance of classrooms.

Now, when the child enters the change of teeth, its soul is torn out of the imitative being and led over to what I characterized yesterday: to the self-evident authority towards the teacher, the instructor. And the whole lesson must then be shaped artistically. The aim cannot be to activate the child's intellectual element. One must certainly expect that a completely different set of forces will be activated in the child. For as this part of the etheric body, of which I spoke yesterday, becomes manifest, becomes spiritual, what is now happening in the child becomes apparent: An entirely rhythmic activity in the activity of the respiratory system, the circulatory system and in other human rhythmic activities, in the alternation of [waking and sleeping], which is also a rhythmic experience. In treating the child between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, with everything that is done in teaching and education, we are dealing with the impulses that are transmitted rhythmically in the physical world in the respiratory and circulatory systems, which have an influence on whether the child has the right inner inclination towards [illegible word], from [illegible word], whether it can create the strengthening forces through the [illegible word] as it grows, and so on. Everything that goes on in the rhythmic life of the child has to be [considered] when one is in a position to really make sketches of a practical art of education, which I explained once [in writing] and yesterday. Of course, I can only proceed very sketchily in this lecture.

And then I would like to draw your attention to how we try to introduce the artistic element at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, for example in learning to write. We allow learning to write to precede learning to read. Why is that? Yes, learning to read is a child's own activity. The visual, the observing element in the human organism is particularly tense during this learning process - while the whole person is tense when they are carrying out a volitional activity that has to be lived out as volitional activity through the organism. It is therefore natural to begin not with learning to read, but with learning to write, and then, when the child has learned to write for a while, to continue with learning to read.

But learning to write itself must be practiced artistically. Just think, if you try, even with today's advanced methods, to introduce the child to what our writing letters are, the child is prompted to do something that is actually still completely alien to its nature.

You can also see this from a historical perspective: The letters we use today are the result of a long development of writing. The first letters were either those that emerged from a painterly activity - like pictorial writing - or through a higher activity from a certain inner objectification of antipathies and sympathies. They allow the outer sign to take shape, as is the case with cuneiform writing. Writing was originally something quite different, much closer to the human experience of soul and body than it is today. [In order for the child to have an inner experience [of] which letter it is, it is not at all necessary to deal with the historical development of writing in class. It is only a matter of trying to include the inner spirit of the development of writing [precisely] at the time when the body can still develop artistically out of the whole being of the human being as a matter of course.

And this is where you find the connection if you do the following, for example: Let's assume we connect to a child's pronunciation of the word “fish”. We try to draw a simple fish shape on the board for the child in as pictorial a form as possible - which always speaks [more] to the child's imagination than to the mind.

And then we get them to pronounce the word fish and then limit their pronunciation to the beginning of this word; we guide the child to limit their pronunciation of the word fish to “F”. And then you say to him: We express this “F” through what is the image of the fish, and gradually form the “F” out of the fish shape. Or we pronounce the word “mouth”, we start from this drawing: let the child limit himself to the ‘M’ and bring out the “M” from the musical-pictorial. In this way, we form the entire writing process out of the sensation and the perceived activity in a pictorial, artistic way.

Of course, it is then necessary to focus on the artistic, especially for the very young child in the seventh and eighth year of life; to introduce the child to the treatment of color and form in a natural way and to maintain this continuously. Teaching therefore becomes artistic right from the start.

Today, so-called experimental pedagogy experiments a lot about how quickly the child tires during this [writing] learning. It is carefully recorded that the child tires so quickly through this activity, and such [abstract] pedagogy is then introduced where this attempt at fatigue is taken into account.

But if you want to introduce artistic, artistic teaching, you count on the artistic-artistic system in these years. But that, in turn, is not tiring. After all, if you are not thinking about something, you will not get tired at all. The respiratory and circulatory systems have always continued. So anyone who judges a lesson on the basis of fatigue shows that someone is giving the wrong lesson. Because at this age you have to teach in such a way that it is based on a system that does not tire - and that is the rhythmic system, the respiratory system and the circulatory system.

It's only because you don't know these things that these things come out, which are basically pedagogical absurdities. And therefore, because it is particularly will-forming, music, the musical element of a child, must be given special consideration. And where it is a question of the musical element, which itself stimulates the lesson, which is all the more active in the child the younger the child is - this element is then particularly represented by eurythmy. Eurythmy evokes movements in the child that correspond exactly to the child's natural degree of development, just as spoken language does. Just as the child settles into spoken language accompanied by an inner will and desire to learn to speak, so it is with the eurythmic element. In these figures I have allowed eurythmy to represent precisely that which lies in the eurythmic movement, in the character of the eurythmic gestures themselves. And if one then teaches these eurythmic movements to the child in such a way that they are so meaningful as poetic figures that correspond to the individual sound - the succession of a-e-i-o-u, and then again with consonant, [gap] in m, f, h, ch, [illegible sound], g, s, r - then one hears from the whole human organism, which is thus made into a single larynx by extracting this visible language, then the letters are [directly] extracted from the human organism in the same sequence in which they are formed as sounds purely by natural imitation in the first age of the child.

Let the child go through [illegible word] what is natural to the human organization. This exerts a tremendous influence on the formation of human dexterity, on the learning of the skillful use of the individual limbs. [This is particularly lacking in the training of people today. Gymnastics should not be eliminated from the world by introducing this impulsive element into the child's artistic level of movement. But a future age will judge impartially [in this way]: Today people certainly don't want to base themselves on anything other than the development of science - and in this respect they overestimate gymnastics. I certainly don't want to criticize gymnastics in any way. In any case, I cannot go as far as a very famous physiologist - also in this room - who once listened to an introduction about eurythmy and its pedagogical value. I said: If you study the purely physiological theory of movement through physiology, then gymnastics is what you train in people only according to their bodies. But this will be supplemented one day - probably also from what flows from the soul into the child's body.

Then said this famous physiologist - I don't want to say his name, as one might [gap in shorthand]). Do you see gymnastics as a real subject? As a physiologist, I see gymnastics for children as nothing other than barbarism.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it wasn't me who said this, but a famous physiologist who said that. This shows you how little the development based on scientific observation corresponds to the real experience of the child. And if you know this exactly, you will no longer shy away from introducing eurythmy lessons into the school curriculum in the right way.

You can also see all kinds of experiments on the wall, all kinds of attempts at painting, how the children learn to experience color, how very simple color combinations are used as a starting point and how an entire map is ultimately created from the treatment of color. And it becomes like this when the child adjusts to getting this out of the life of color. Then it is quite different from coming to him with an abstract geography, when you want to make this abstract geography physically concrete by going through it with the child in a trivialized way through local history and so on. You can see how important it is not to work towards a so-called intellectual understanding, especially at this age. This understanding is [brought up] through reading.

[There are entire] works of literature that have been developed for the purpose of teaching comprehension, [...] that have been made to appear completely trivial simply because it is believed that this [illegible passage] is being transcended. But whoever does this does not know that you have to educate children in such a way that you lay the foundation for health at this age, that [illegible passage] if you are not in a position, for example in 35 years, to say to yourself: Now something clearly resonates in your developmental picture. What used to be there is [now] beginning to resonate. Something wants to rise up here in a way that you knew, because you revered the teacher who explained it as an authority. And now it is rising. Much that has passed you by since then, which was present in you for a long time, is now there and connects with your life, with the life experience you now have: only now do you understand it.

Such an inner act can, under certain circumstances, at the age of 35 or 40, mean the kindling of a very significant life force [unclear passage]. But only he can educate properly who can educate the child to live. [Gap in the shorthand]

Letting the child memorize too much or too little, [gap in shorthand] that will become apparent in 34 or / illegible] years of illness [illegible passage in shorthand]

It is of no use for a detailed science if you only cut out a person's liver or kidney when he is 52 years old, and now the life [illegible word]. It is only when you know what has worked in it in infancy, the milk components that have ruined the liver or kidney, that it becomes apparent at the age of 50. So it is with everything you accomplish with writing and through reading, where at that age - where the whole brain wanders in up to the seventh year, where the [whole] organism takes out individual components in one year - you work into the whole organism of the human being according to his etheric, soul and spiritual constitution. The teacher must therefore acquire [pedagogy] as an animated pedagogical art if pedagogy is to develop in its beneficial way into the future.

According to natural science, it is a matter of quickly and purposefully designing lessons in pictorial form for children of compulsory school age. I cannot go into this in detail. Of course, it is not only about teaching writing in pictorial form, but also about teaching everything that is brought into the child's view of the world in pictorial form. Everything is given to the children [in the Waldorf school] in a kind of narrative, in a kind of “visualization”. Nothing actually enters the inner being of the entire human organism before the age of nine or ten that is not taught in a thoroughly pictorial form. This really requires the teacher, the educator, to have artistic creative power for everything he brings to the child. This will continue until the age of nine or ten. This is when something of fundamental importance enters the child's life anyway. Something happens in the child's soul between the ages of nine and ten that is unfortunately not usually given the proper attention by educators and teachers. Something is going on where the children need an even more intensive leaning on an authority. And accordingly, the entire compulsory school age must be revitalized. The world - represented by the teacher or educator - approaches the child. Not intellectually, but [emotionally].

The child has its own questions. Questions that are then connected with the momentary physical development [illegible passage]. If I were to speak sufficiently about this important inner change between the ninth and tenth year of life, I would only like to draw attention to what is particularly important to note about such schools [illegible passage] boys and girls.

I would like to point out that this is the age at which girls begin to grow rapidly. The boys fall behind a little. But not for long, at around the age of fifteen the boys catch up quickly, but even into their growth it becomes apparent that something is going on with their growth that is not even [illegible words]

This is the time when the child learns to distinguish between itself and the world. The sense of self was not there before, everything has to be brought to the child as if all external events were as close as the child's own self. So you don't have to bring something that is in us [illegible passage] to the children. The teacher must have overcome everything he has learned in a scientific way. On the other hand, he must be able to develop the [primal being] in such an inner way of understanding [towards the] child that it feels the inner [primal being] as it feels the [power] of its own limbs. Teaching must be structured in this way up to the ninth or tenth year. It is precisely at this age, when one becomes a physical observer of human beings - which is where most of the words come from today - that one will find that sometimes a single word is spoken by the teacher or educator, an [illegible passage in the shorthand].

But one will have to take into account that, for example, one does not have to teach the primal being to the child in such a way that what the individual [illegible passage in shorthand] one will have to take into account is that it is pleasant for the child to absorb the piece of earth that it knows, and beyond that it can sense the whole earth, that the earth produces the environment, like the head produces human hair. Just as a single hair does not have an existence of its own [gap in shorthand] - to believe such a thing would be absurd - neither does the individual / illegible] have an existence of its own, but only together with the whole earth, but for this a feeling must be awakened in a child at an early age, for only through this does the whole soul of man adjust itself.

Therefore one must bring the poetic world to the child in such a way that, just as one teaches the connection between the environment and the earth, one must also take up the connection with the human being. [Gap in the shorthand]

Every child is actually [illegible passage in shorthand]).

If the whole poem were really to be created symptomatically in one way, the whole human being would first emerge. But this must then be brought into concrete form so that the child has the [illegible passage in shorthand].

You will see how such a treatment of the [illegible] with the earth has a stimulating effect on the development of the best parts of the child's qualities. And one will see how such a treatment of the poem really works to stimulate the development of the human mind, which is like a germ, like a preparation for the later ages of life [gap in shorthand].

But one will also see how the introduction of such a [illegible word] into a form, at the same time into this human-physical organism, strengthens and invigorates the human being - and how such a deep morality empowers the human being, to be little [illegible word], without attacks on the digestive apparatus and the entire nutritional system, as if the child were taught poetic morality in some physical-scientific way [illegible passage in shorthand].

Only then can we move on to the treatment of minerals. Only then can one proceed to the treatment of chemistry, in so far as it is already characteristic of cause and effect over the epoch. Before that, you should only develop complete images of people in front of the child so that the child grasps connections with a kind of artistic understanding. Connections of a temporal nature and also things of a historical nature that are based on cause and effect are unsuitable to be taught to the child earlier than before the age of twelve. [Gap in shorthand]

So I can only outline how the curriculum can be read from a proper human education, from human nature itself. In fact, our curriculum [illegible word], but it is designed in such a way that it is not formed from arbitrary measures, but is read from what human nature finds from year to year, from month to month, from week to week [gap in shorthand].

Then one can [recognize] in detail from human nature what one has to bring to the child, and how certain things justify a pedagogy out of real human education. It is relatively easy to say: understanding cannot be taught, [illegible passage in shorthand].

But we are too dependent on social conditions and must also base education on social conditions. Therefore this pedagogy, as it is meant here, is such that it can become that under every [gap in shorthand] child can become.

With sexual maturity, however, something radical happens to the human being. Whereas with the change of teeth a part of the etheric body has emancipated itself from the physical body, the rhythmic system is now working in a roundabout way, with sexual maturity a part of the actual soul organism [emancipates itself], that which from now on is the soul organism. In anthroposophical literature it is also called the astral organism. One needs [illegible passage in shorthand].

[The soul organism] emancipates itself from the cooperation with the physical and etheric organism in which it used to be, and this part of the astral organism now preferably becomes the [representative] of the will activity and those activities in the human being that must originate from the will.

But this is also the faculty of judgment, there is something very strange going on in man. If I were to demonstrate this to you, I would have to draw the following. How we are all sitting here again: We have the human being, we then have his etheric organism, so it is evenly distributed up to the seventh year. From the seventh year onwards, one part is emancipated, delimited, flooded with the soul and preferably supplies the rhythmic system, which must then be taken into consideration in education from the age of seven to fourteen. At sexual maturity, not only that which is to be most grossly overlooked, the sexual being of the human being, enters, but also that being which is called the astral being [illegible words], in that a part of it emancipates itself and thus presents itself to the human being, preferably that which is now the bearer of the unfolding of the will inwards. In physiological terms this is expressed by the fact that previously the bone system of man, the muscular system in which it grew, was preferably under the influence of the rhythmic system [illegible word]. From the fourteenth or fifteenth year onwards this is no longer the case. Anyone who has an appreciation of this knows that the child begins to walk and grasp differently than before. It draws its astral organism into itself, so to speak. The bone and muscle system begin to develop not under the influence of the outer world, because the astral organism emancipates itself and now unfolds preferably in the metabolic and limb system and works there in such a way that the whole bone and limb system emancipates itself from the rhythmic system.

Modern human psychology is well aware that from this point on it lives much more with the outside world than was previously visible. It believes that the ability to judge depends only on the brain and metabolism. In truth, it depends on the limb system, on bone and muscle development, as experienced inwardly by the human being by placing himself in the rhythm and moving visibly in time. This only radiates back into the brain and causes the power of judgment to develop there. And this power of judgment [...] can only be taught in such a way that the child is encouraged to form its own judgments independently of [relying on] authority. It is of course downright comical for people who have learned in modern psychology - you can already sense this comedy when you tell them that this ability to judge does not depend solely on the brain, but also on the bone and muscle system. - But this comedy will end one day. And the other thing will be funny. You have no feeling for why a person steps quite differently when he steps with his whole foot than when he steps with his heels first. Try to [find out] what difference there is between the two in terms of logic. For example, Fichte was someone who always appeared heel first. The whole of Fichte's logic can be understood from the point of view of appearing with the heel. This gives us the opportunity to acquire an inner understanding of the world in a direct way. But this is what the teacher needs. And he needs it in such a way that it is not just in his head. The head is the least you can do in this [field]. The head is an almost unsuitable instrument for practical and spiritual work. Things have to be in the whole person, it has to come about in a child when one senses how an entity arises together from the kind of rhythm, from the way [illegible passage] logic develops, an inner being has to come about and an inner palette has to arise in the educator just as it does in a painter when he has the red, violet and so on in his crucibles, [illegible passage in shorthand] (...).

In this way one also comes to introduce in the right way into the development of the human being what is manual, outwardly practical activity. One might think that a pedagogy based on anthroposophy and thus on spiritual education only makes one-sided use of the spiritual and mental. But this is by no means the case; on the contrary, it is precisely such a pedagogy that will recognize how the spiritual and mental forces will also stimulate that unity in the right way through the fact that there is physical activity. Because, as I said yesterday, the physical, the mental and the spiritual are seen as a unity, Waldorf schools, for example, teach manual work from the very beginning - by boys and girls together. This shows in a wonderful way how the boys devote themselves to what we are used to calling female manual work with the same diligence as to any other activity. The right moment is allowed to occur in woodworking, carpentry, joinery and so on, which is a transition to the skilled trades. In this way you can see how what the child acquires in the dexterity of its limbs and in the practical art of living is what will have an effect on the soul and spirit. At the right moment, therefore, in this art of education, weaving and spinning are practiced.

These lessons are not oriented towards merely cultivating the soul and spirit. There is always more than one [illegible word] attitude. If one cultivates the spiritual and mental in schools, because one wants to prepare people in the right way for the practical, in which they are active in a [illegible word] way [illegible word], then their physical organism can be used into old age without it becoming an obstacle. For this, however, the soul and spirit must be properly prepared and thus developed.

At the Waldorf School, we do everything we can to make the teachers the focus of all teaching. This is what is studied at the teachers' conferences: Either with the teachers themselves or - if a child can also be present - the individuality of each child is carefully studied, including its context in social life. And when the child leaves school at the end of a school year, it doesn't have the kind of report cards that are common today [illegible passage in shorthand].

Especially when these achievements are expressed in numbers, you get into something that makes me laugh too [illegible passage in shorthand]. In the Waldorf school, every teacher writes a little biography in the report cards that corresponds to the child. Then they write in some core saying that can correspond to the child's will and feelings for the next year, which he or she can always put before the soul. In this way, the child sees its own path reflected in this testimony. This is out of life. Spirit leads everywhere only into full life - not out of it. And if you become honest for once, this is how it can be expressed, ladies and gentlemen.

We have two or three pupils among our students who will one day become brilliant people. Perhaps we as teachers are not even geniuses; it could well be that there are many more geniuses among our children. We must also educate these children in such a way that we can lead them beyond our own genius - which may not even exist - and beyond their talents. We will never be able to do that if we only nurture [their] talents in the classroom. Education must be completely independent of ourselves; we cannot actually educate the inner core of a person's being, because it educates itself. Basically, all education is self-education, and you have to know that. It will particularly stumble if you try to educate someone who is more of a failure than you are. What a person acquires is always acquired from the outside world and from our own lessons. Otherwise one could not speak of the art of education at all, [illegible words]

People have the art of education who feel that their teaching once [gap in shorthand] did not quite correspond, only they are not called upon to say: I am badly educated, and that should lead them to know what is right. You're in a strange circle when you talk about educational possibilities today [gap in shorthand].

All education is therefore self-education - and we have to educate the child spiritually and mentally, [illegible words] to shape the physical and spiritual organism in such a way that the child educates itself. All education is basically an education for [learning through life], and all we can educate is that a child is treated by us in such a way that its body offers it as few obstacles as possible to lead it into life.

But that is not all: to introduce a doctrine of unity in pedagogy and didactics, [illegible passage in shorthand].

To shape the spiritual and mental in such a way that [illegible passage in shorthand] the body becomes healthy and strong. If we educate the body in the right way according to spiritual development, then in later life man will have his self-education from the way he has been educated by himself in unity and from his spirit to [illegible word] be able to place himself in life. It is precisely the correct physical education [gap in shorthand] that has an influence on a correct pedagogy, both [gap in shorthand].

Time is pressing. What you have [illegible word], that - what I also intended - we in anthroposophy also want to lead the pedagogy and didactics [illegible passage in shorthand], but it should also be led into a real life practice.