VI. A Lecture for Public School Teachers

Around the age of seven, a clear change in the spirit-soul constitution of the child begins. We could say that at this age the capacity to react to something quite differently than before emerges. Previously, the child’s eye was intent upon imitating, the child’s ear was intent upon imitating. Now the child begins to concentrate upon what adults radiate as opinion, as points of view. The child transforms its desire to imitate into devotion to authority. 1 know how unpleasant it is for many modern people when we make authority an important factor in education. However, if we wish to represent the facts openly and seriously, programs and slogans cannot direct us. Only empirical facts, only experience can be our guides. We need to see what it means when children have been guided by a teacher they can look up to because this teacher is a natural authority for them. That the developing human can take something into its thoughts, can live into something, because the respected adult has these thoughts and feelings, because there is a “growing together” between the developing being and the adult being, is of great importance in the development of the child. You can know what it means for the whole later life of the child only when you (I want to say this explicitly) have had the luck of having been able to devote yourself to a natural authority in the time between the transformation at around six or seven years of age and the last great transformation around the time of puberty, at about fourteen or fifteen years of age.