Lecture Five

There is something else we have to consider: There is a great difference between learning something before and learning something after the age of nineteen or twenty. People generally learn a trade like surveying at nineteen or later. High school education, especially in grammar schools, does not include such practical subjects. But the long-term effect depends on it. What we learn after the nineteenth year impresses itself more outwardly; what we learn and experience at fifteen permeates our whole being, becomes as one with the human spirit, so that it is not merely a job we can manage, but a job we can identify with, in which our entire being participates. This applies also to the elementary aspects of mechanics, engineering, and the subjects I mentioned in regard to the education of girls.