Address Given on the Eve of the Course

GA 293 — 20 August 1919, Stuttgart

based on participants' notes

This evening, only a few preliminary remarks will be made. The Waldorf School must be a true cultural achievement in order to bring about a renewal of our present spiritual life. We must expect transformation in all things; the entire social movement ultimately goes back to the spiritual [the social movement is ultimately thrown back on the spiritual], and the question of schooling is a sub-category of the great burning spiritual questions of the present. The possibility of the Waldorf school must be exploited in order to bring about reform and revolution in the school system.

The success of this cultural undertaking is in your hands. Much is thus placed in your hands to contribute by setting an example. Much depends on the success of this undertaking. The Waldorf school will be practical proof of the effectiveness of the anthroposophical worldview. It will be a unified school in the sense that it will focus solely on educating and teaching in the way that human beings, in their entirety, require. We must place everything at the service of this goal.

But we need to make compromises. Compromises are necessary because we are not yet ready to accomplish a truly free act. Poor teaching goals and poor final goals are prescribed for us by the state. These goals are the worst imaginable, and people will imagine them to be the highest imaginable. Politics, political activity from now on, will manifest itself in treating people in a stereotypical manner, in attempting to fit people into molds to a much greater extent than ever before. People will be treated like objects that must be pulled by strings, and it will be imagined that this represents the greatest possible progress. Things such as educational institutions will be set up inappropriately and as arrogantly as possible. An example and foretaste of this is the construction of Russian Bolshevik schools, which are a veritable graveyard for all real education. We are facing a tough battle, but we must still carry out this cultural task.

Two conflicting forces must be reconciled. On the one hand, we must know what our ideals are, yet still have the flexibility to adapt to what will be far removed from our ideals. How to reconcile these two forces will be difficult for each and every one of you. This can only be achieved if everyone uses their full personality. Everyone must use their full personality from the very beginning.

That is why we will not set up the school according to government rules, but according to administrative rules, and we will manage it republicanly. In a true teachers' republic, we will not have the security of regulations issued by the rector's office behind us, but we must carry within us that which gives us the opportunity, that which gives each of us full responsibility for what we have to do. Everyone must be fully responsible for themselves.

A substitute for a rectorate leadership can be created by setting up this preparatory course and working on what makes the school a unified whole. We will develop this unity through the course if we work seriously.

It should be announced that the course will include:

firstly, an ongoing discussion of general educational issues;

secondly, a discussion of specific methodological issues relating to the most important subjects; thirdly, a kind of seminar work within the scope of what our teaching tasks will be. We will work out these teaching tasks and put them into practice in disputation exercises.

Each day, we will have the more theoretical part in the morning and the seminar-like part in the afternoon.

So tomorrow we will begin at 9 a.m. with general pedagogy, then at 10:30 a.m. we will have the special methodological instruction, and in the afternoon from 3 to 6 p.m. we will have the seminar-like exercises.

We must be fully aware that a great cultural achievement must be made in every direction.

We do not want to establish a worldview school here at the Waldorf School. The Waldorf School should not be a worldview school where we fill the children's heads with anthroposophical dogmas as much as possible. We do not want to teach anthroposophical dogma; anthroposophy is not a subject to be taught, but we strive for the practical application of anthroposophy. We want to implement what can be gained in the field of anthroposophy in real teaching practice.

The content of anthroposophy will be much less important than the practical application of what can be gained from anthroposophy in terms of pedagogy in general and specific methods in particular, i.e., how anthroposophy can be applied in teaching.

Religious instruction will be provided in the religious communities. We will only apply anthroposophy in the methodology of teaching. We will therefore distribute the children to the religious teachers according to their denominations.

That is the other part of the compromise. Through justified compromises, we accelerate our cultural work.

We must be aware of the great tasks ahead of us. We must not merely be educators, but we must be cultured people in the highest degree, in the highest sense of the word. We must have a lively interest in everything that is happening today, otherwise we are poor teachers for this school. We must not only commit ourselves to our specific tasks. We will only be good teachers if we have a lively interest in everything that is happening in the world. It is through our interest in the world that we must first gain the enthusiasm we need for the school and for our work. This requires mental flexibility and dedication to our task. Only then can we draw on what can be gained today when we turn our attention to: first, the great needs of the time; and second, the great tasks of the time, all of which cannot be fitted into a mental image as being large enough.