XIV. Aesthetic Education

What children need is a sense of reality. Again I will choose a very simple example to show you what I mean. One could draw a pattern such as this (see diagram). Teachers must be able to evoke a feeling in children that such a pattern is intolerable because it does not represent reality, and a little practice with students who react in healthy ways will soon enable you to do so. Teachers should intensify this healthy feeling—not through suggestions, but by drawing it out of the students—to the extent that, if they see such a pattern, it will be as though they were seeing a person with only half a face or one arm or foot. Such a thing goes against the grain, because it does not represent reality. This is the kind of reaction teachers should induce in students, for it is all part of an esthetic sensibility. In other words, teachers should allow the students to feel that they cannot rest until they have completed a pattern by drawing the missing, complementary part. In this way one cultivates in children an immediate, living sense of beauty. In German, the word schön (“beautiful”) is related to the word Schein (“shine” or “glory”). Such an approach stimulates the child’s astral body to become flexible and to function well as a living member of the human being.