VI. Teaching Eurythmy, Music, Drawing, and Language

To illustrate some things I will discuss later, I will begin today with a remedy I attempted at our Waldorf School in Stuttgart. After I had observed the teaching in the eighth grade, I mentioned in a faculty meeting how various teachers were unable to cope with some of the children. I also mentioned that what we want to accomplish in a particular period could not be accomplished by a certain number of the children due to that problem. I had the teachers prepare a list of children who were lagging behind, and then I met with each of the children from the various grades who appeared to be weak during the previous school year. Since it was possible for me to be in Stuttgart only during the Christmas holiday, these meetings were made possible by the extraordinary willingness of the parents and children at the school. It was important for me and the respective class teachers to determine what the problem with each child could have been, from either a physiological or psychological perspective. When testing the capabilities of students in this way, you need to start from somewhat deeper principles than those commonly used today that are derived from so-called experimental psychology. (But I do not want to say anything against this so long as it remains within its own boundaries.) I attempted to show how it is possible to test insufficient capacities on things that actually lie very far from the capacity in question. For example, we can take the situation where a child in the third grade, for instance, that is, about eight or eight-and-a-half years old, is not sufficiently attentive. When the child is attentive, we can teach him or her something that he will most likely soon forget. It is, however, not possible to properly develop the desired level of attentiveness in that child.