A Bit about My English Journey

Report in: Das Goetheanum, vol. 3, no. 5

Rudolf Steiner

Margaret McMillan and her work

When I arrived in England on August 4th for the two lecture series that were to take place in Ilkley and Penmaenmawer, Margaret McMillan's book 'Education through the Imagination', which was intended as a gift for me, was waiting for me. As soon as I had skimmed through the first few pages, I felt how well the book captured the mood in which I had to give my first lecture series. The series was intended to describe the art of education and teaching as realized at the Stuttgart Waldorf School. It was now a real pleasure for me to read this book. In order to find fruitful educational forces, it goes back from the expressions of life that reveal themselves on the surface of the child's human being to the deeper soul power of the imagination, which holds all of these together and illuminates and permeates them from within. It develops an awareness of how childlike thoughts are shadow images of this soul power and receive their actual life from it. It follows how the imagination flows into the child's emotional world, shaping it, and how it lives in the activity of the will.

By “imagination” I do not, of course, mean the soul power that has often been described in this weekly journal as the one through which one attains the first stage of supersensible knowledge, but rather its instinctive reflection, which works in every human mind and which is particularly in the child the bearer of the soul life. “The man in the street” does not think much of this wonderful thing. For him, ‘imagination is almost purely visionary, and someone who imagines is someone who sees things that are completely unreal.’ ”For the practical man, imagination is seen as a kind of weakness.” McMillan disagrees. She seeks a path from the manifest powers of the soul to the more hidden ones; and in doing so, she comes to say that the wonderful power of imagination is not only present in the creative minds of science and art, but that it also works as the actual driving force in everything that man does for everyday life. “It would be just as reasonable to say that light only shines on mountain tops as it would to say that creative power only resides in the souls of artists and scientists. It flows and burns... The brain of every adult and child is, in its own way, a world in which degrees of creative power reveal themselves.” As soon as a person grows beyond mere routine, the imaginative creative power sets in, which carries him through life as a thinking and active being.

In the child, whose activity has not yet become routine, imagination reveals itself as the true driving force of the soul. This is what the educator and teacher must turn to.

With a true educational genius, McMillan seeks to understand the peculiarities of the child's mind. The book is a treasure trove of the most precious observations of the child's soul and of educational instructions that are drawn from these observations. A chapter like “The child as artisan” can only be read with the deepest satisfaction.

After reading the book, I felt that the author could be understood very well by saying: Anyone who is able to penetrate into education and teaching in this way must also be able to follow the path I had to speak about on my lecture tour in Ilkley.

Therefore, I felt fortunate that this series of lectures was introduced by Margaret McMillan, the chairwoman, with her opening speech. She delivered this speech with all the beautiful enthusiasm that speaks so intensely from her, and wove this enthusiasm together with the other that she has for the education of the “poorest of the poor.” To hear this woman speak about the social aspect of educating the “children of the poor” is a great experience.

An even greater experience was to see her words put into action. Today I accepted McMillan's invitation to visit her care and educational institution in Deptford, near London. McMillan has taken three hundred children from the poorest classes of society, aged between two and twelve, and provided them with wonderful care. A dedicated, safe and caring team of educators work around McMillan. The children are brought to the institution in a state of complete neglect, literally pulled out of the dirt. Afflicted with rickets or tuberculosis, or with much worse ailments, emotionally dull, intellectually dormant, this is the state of the children who come to the home. And one sees the difference after the care has taken effect: intellectually active, emotionally happy, healthy, modest young human beings in the individual classes.

It is equally satisfying to see these children playing, learning, eating and resting after meals.

In one of the classrooms, a number of older children were gathered. Here, in a practical way, what is described in the book about the “child as an artist” developed. These children charmingly played scenes from Shakespeare's “Midsummer Night's Dream”. These little actors were full of soul and dramatic expression. This artistic teaching is done by McMillan himself.

The classrooms are simple, barrack-like structures with very thin wooden walls, set in a kind of garden in the middle of a miserable slum. You can get almost directly from the care rooms to the streets, where you see the children who are not lucky enough to be among the three hundred of McMillan.

This care facility is located on the site where Queen Elizabeth's royal household once lived. She herself lived in nearby Greenwich. Shakespeare seems to have played on the same site for this royal household, where today the little ones so charmingly present his work.

Next to this care facility is another house. A sanatorium for the children of the “poorest”. McMillan is the matron here. Six thousand children pass through this sanatorium each year.

There is a noble consecration over all of this. Margaret Mc Millan lost her dearly beloved sister “Rahel” in 1917. The nursing home is now dedicated to her memory. This woman's motto was: “Treat every child as if it were your own”. And you can feel Rahel Mc Millan's spirit in every room. Margaret McMillan lives entirely in this spirit in her powerful, loving work.

In the book “The Nursery School”, McMillan describes the life of her foster school. In the preface, there are beautiful sentences: “Every teacher is an explorer, an inventor, a leader in new methods; or he is a mere handyman, not a master”. McMillan is allowed to write these sentences.

The fact that she responded so positively to my recent educator course on the “Waldorf School” approach, as she did, fills me with the deepest satisfaction.