I. Spiritual Science and Modern Education

There we see the actual soul aspect of the human being. When the child begins elementary school and is still under the influences of the forces involved in the change of teeth, the intellectual aspect is not yet present. However, by becoming more localized, the will aspect becomes from week to week and from month to month more enclosed in the body during the period of elementary school. If you know that, you will include in the elementary school curriculum those things lying in the proper direction to support the development of the will in the intellect. If you understand what will and intellect are, and can observe how from month to month and from year to year the will becomes localized in the child’s speech, and the intellect that has withdrawn into the spirit-soul; if you understand how these interact, you will understand what you must do in teaching the children for their physical and soul upbringing. Then you will consider education an art and will recognize that you first need to understand the material, human nature. Just as a sculptor has clay and works with it the way a painter works with colors, so must an artist in education understand how to work the will into the intellect. A pedagogical artist must understand how to act in order to create the proper interpenetration, the proper artistic form, of the intellect that was born at the age of seven, and how to approach the will that is to develop through the hands of the elementary school teacher until puberty.