The Idea and Practice of Waldorf Education

GA 297 — 21 May 1920, Aarau

1. Community From the Point of View of Spiritual Science

Great Questions of Humanity¹ are on the doorstep. The spiritual scientific direction, outwardly represented by the well-known building in Dornach, seeks to provide an answer to this. I will speak here of the pedagogical and social consequences that arise from this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Before I do that, I would like to give a broad outline of the nature of the whole spiritual-scientific direction. This is not about something that is sought outside of the human being, that could be demonstrated to humanity through experiments, but rather about the most inner human being, which hopes to be able to be implemented in the most practical way. Spiritual science does not want to overthrow the foundations of all previous world views, but rather to add something new to them: the view of a real spiritual life beyond the scientific experience, the realization of the spiritual nature of man.

For three to four centuries, the basic ideas of scientific thinking have dominated our views. Spiritual science is not opposed to these. It recognizes the great triumphs of the scientific world view, but aims to be more scientific than the latter itself. It does not want to back down from the so-called limits of human knowledge, but to arrive at the true knowledge of man. If it has been said that where supernaturalism begins, science ends, then spiritual science also aims to work scientifically in this field. In order to reach this goal, it must first adopt the standpoint of intellectual modesty. A comparison: if you give a five-year-old child a volume of lyrical poems, he will play with it, tear it up, and after ten to twelve years he will be able to use the volume in a meaningful way. We must believe in these dormant developmental possibilities in the five-year-old child.

The spiritual researcher now says that what lies within us is not limited to what has been formed by birth, inheritance and ordinary education. The forces of human nature are capable of development beyond that. Through intimate inner soul work, a person gradually learns to draw abilities from the depths of the soul, of which one has no inkling in ordinary life and [in ordinary] science. The principle here is that the person must methodically and constantly repeat the inner experiment, that he must persistently make an easily visible thought the guiding star of his consciousness. This self-made thought content is placed at the center of his consciousness, and he muster all his soul forces to set nothing but this thought content as his goal. The basis for this is intellectual modesty and belief in the possibility of development. After such an exercise in patience, we experience that human experience breaks away from the physical-bodily tool. One attains a life of thinking, knowing that it is not bound to the human body, that it flows in the spiritual-soul. It is a great moment when one can say to oneself: You live in the spiritual-soul. You then realize that there really are higher spiritual insights that go beyond the life between birth and death. Something is created similar to the ability to remember, an ability to imagine, a life that we can call prenatal life. This prenatal life comes to the soul as an experience, as an inner experience. Immortality is no longer something to philosophize about. The powers that others use for philosophizing are used by the spiritual researcher to develop new abilities and to gain different experiences. The willpower can also be trained. The spiritual researcher takes his path of development into his own hands and tries to exercise self-discipline. By deciding to incorporate this or that habit, the will is cultivated. This realization will perhaps be taken up by many, as, for example, the realizations of a Copernicus or a Giordano Bruno were taken up when mankind still believed in the boundaries of the firmament.

Those who become spiritual researchers themselves gain a new overview of the world and a deep knowledge of humanity. Not everyone can become a spiritual researcher. But in the spiritual worlds, everyone can penetrate due to today's world development.

How can spiritual science enrich the life of education? A practical experiment has been conducted at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. There is much talk today about the need for change in teaching. Nevertheless, it would be historically ungrateful and historically untrue to say that educational science is the furthest behind in scientific life. When I started to put my ideas into practice at the Waldorf School, it was my conviction that it was not education as a science that was primarily in need of reform, but that we needed a worldview that could directly inspire all art and thus also education, so that we would be able to apply the excellent principles of education that already exist everywhere.

Spiritual science does not merely speak to the intellect; it encompasses the whole human being. Above all, a thorough knowledge of human nature is necessary. One can only penetrate into the real life of a human being through spiritual science. Through it, we acquire the ability to observe the human being from the stage of life when he changes his teeth. Only through spiritual science do we actually develop a more subtle power of observation. This teaches us to recognize how, in the first seven years of life, the human being is a purely imitative creature. An example: a five-year-old boy has stolen money from the drawer. The parents are deeply saddened. Unjustly so. The boy has just seen how the mother always takes money out of the drawer.

Let us pick out something else. When the child reaches seven years of age and gets his second teeth, this also marks an organic, internal turning point. If one has learned to observe the spiritual and soul forces, one learns to recognize how the forces have reached a transition point here (Goethe's law of metamorphosis). In this year, human ideas begin to form in the child in such a way that they can be absorbed by the ability to remember. The forces break away from the organism, become soul-spiritual and appear as a separate power of imagination. These observations are as soundly based as chemical observations.

They show that the abilities that the child develops through play up to the age of seven reappear later, but only in the twenties. In the meantime, they remain, so to speak, below the surface. In the meantime, the forces are used to gain life experience. From the age of seven, play becomes social play. Individual play only comes to life again in the twenties as the power of life experience.

It is very nice when educational principles say that you have to draw out the dormant powers in a child. However, it is not the principles that are important, but knowing what can be developed in a child.

After the seventh year – approximately – the instinct of imitation is joined by the instinct of authority. Anyone who knows human nature knows that from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, there is a predisposition for devotion to an external authority.

The ninth year becomes the Rubicon again. The child breaks away from his surroundings in his inner consciousness and distinguishes himself from them. He distinguishes himself from his authority, but surrenders to it in love.

These experiences must be taken into account in practical teaching. The first actions in primary school must be geared to the will, not to intellectuality. One penetrates to the conventional by way of art. Thus, writing is best developed out of drawing and painting.

Other experiments have been made at Stuttgart. We have created a visible language. The movements of the larynx, as seen by supersensible vision, are translated into soul-inspired gymnastics (Eurythmy), in which every movement is the expression of a soul or spiritual process. The languages that a child is to learn should be presented to him as early as possible. In lively interaction with the teacher, we teach English and French to seven- and eight-year-olds, so that the child grows up with these languages. We teach languages because we know that this develops the whole being of the human being.

Between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, one should not yet reckon with the child's power of judgment, but teach him every idea figuratively. If, for example, one wants to present the immortality of the human soul to the child conceptually, one can show the development of the butterfly. But it is essential that the teacher himself believes in the image presented.

From the age of nine, the child begins to separate from the environment. Now we can appeal to his independent judgment.

The spiritual science therefore reads the curriculum from the observed development of the child. It takes the world as it really is, and is therefore something eminently practical. Technical questions, such as determining the number of pupils per class, take a back seat. When the teacher has fulfilled his task, the necessary individual treatment of each pupil will not suffer, even with a large number of pupils. The pupils will individualize themselves.

(The speaker made the aside that he had predicted the world war as early as the spring of 1914, when all cabinets believed that world peace was secured for a long time to come.

We must approach practical life from an inner experience. The next generation must not be in the same condition as the generation that brought the misfortunes of the last years upon Europe. Anyone who has studied education from a spiritual science perspective knows that spiritual life must be placed on its own. This brings us to the social significance of the whole question.

Today the world is more anti-social than ever. It is necessary to recognize that the spiritual life can only develop if it is placed under its own administration.

Spiritual science recognizes that new movements, which have previously slumbered latently, are each pushing from the depths of humanity to the surface. Such phenomena are not explained by the law of cause and effect. For example, what is called democracy emerged for the first time in the 15th century and has since developed more and more. If we are sincere in our belief in democracy, we must separate from it everything that has nothing whatever to do with it. Only those matters which affect every adult in the same way can be administered democratically: public legal matters. But the spiritual life cannot be governed by the State. It must be placed under its own administration. Those who direct the spiritual life should also administer it.

The same applies to economic life, which can only be judged by people who are experts in the field. This too must be removed from democratic administration. It must not be governed from a central office. Separate administrative organizations must be formed from the circles of consumers and producers.

This threefold structure of the social state is not a parallel to Plato's tripartite division into the warrior class, the teacher class and the breadwinner class. Rather, each individual must be involved in all three. Our present chaos stems precisely from the fact that people stand side by side. In threefold socialism [social organism], however, they are to develop their powers organically.

In the unitary state, the words equality, freedom, fraternity remain a lofty ideal. In the tripartite socialism [social organism], in which everyone is organically connected to all three links, they can be realized. Freedom will prevail in the spiritual life; the democratic administration of the legal life will bring equality to everyone; the self-reliant economic life will flourish in fraternity.