VI. Teaching Eurythmy, Music, Drawing, and Language

I have studied the primitive drawings of children for decades. You will not understand children’s drawings if you attempt to simply follow the primitive forms in which children make them. In order to properly understand such drawings, which is actually a representation of what is occurring in the child while drawing, you need to observe children who for some reason or another at the age of six or seven have a talent for drawing as well as children who for whatever reason are unable to draw before the age of nine or ten. It is not good that there are such children, but there is certainly sufficient opportunity to observe them. There is a major difference in the drawings produced by those children around the age of ten who earlier could not draw at all when compared with those drawings made by children at the age of six, seven, or eight. The difference is that those children who at an early age draw something, this is certainly something you all know, those children draw in a very primitive way. They draw, for instance, a head like this [Steiner draws], a head, two eyes, and a mouth. They also often draw the teeth and the legs immediately below. Or they may draw a head, then the torso, make two lines here [for the arms], and sometimes they are aware that on the end of them they need a hand or something.