Lecture Eight

It is up to us whether, during the whole of the elementary school years beginning in first grade, we manage to allow the children to grow into this life of ideals, this imaginative life. A necessary condition is that we ourselves be able to permeate our whole being with such principles that allow us a correct understanding of the way children develop. Through anthroposophy we get a theoretical knowledge of the three most important aspects. Up to the seventh year, when the change of teeth occurs, children are essentially imitators. They develop, we may say, by doing what they see done in their environment. All their activities are basically imitations. Then during the time of the change of teeth, children begin to feel the need for an authority, the need to be told what to do. Thus, while before the change of teeth children accept the things that are done in the environment as a matter of course, copying the good and the bad, the true and the false, now they no longer feel the need to imitate but know that they can carry out what they are told to do and not to do. Then again, at puberty the children begin to feel that they can now make judgments themselves, but they still want to be supported by authorities of their own choosing: “This person may be listened to; I can accept his or her opinions and judgments.”