VI. Educational Methods Based on Anthroposophy II

For a long time now, I have wondered how a majority of boys or of girls affects a class, for we have classes where boys are in the majority, others where girls predominate, and still others where the numbers of boys and girls are more or less balanced. It is never possible to predetermine, from personal contact with such classes, the effect of the relationships of boys to girls: imponderables play their part in the situation. But a class in which girls are in the majority is very different—neither better nor worse of course but all the same very different—from a class in which boys predominate. And, again, a class in which the numbers are more evenly balanced has a very different character. However, something has come into being, especially through working in our meetings with the progress of our pupils—something that is already outwardly expressed in the way we write our school reports. This is what one could call “the Spirit of the Waldorf school.” When we talk about the school—I say this in all modesty—it is no longer enough to speak only about its twenty-five to twenty-eight teachers: it is also possible to speak about the Waldorf school spirit.