Self-education in the Light of Spiritual Science

Let us now consider what can be said about the education of children and young people from the standpoint of spiritual science. You will find everything that can be said on this subject summarized in my little book: “The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science.” Of course, it is impossible to even begin to summarize what is said in that little book today. But it should be pointed out that when we consider the real, actual human being, the whole human being, in the sense of spiritual science, we come to accept certain main impulses of education by following his or her development to a certain degree of maturity. We find that up to about the age of seven, that is, until the change of teeth, education must proceed from what can be called the child's imitation, the child's imitative instinct. Now, it has been emphasized in that writing that, basically, what is more significant than all moral rules and all other instructions for the education of the child in these first years of life is what the child sees and hears from those who are adults in its environment. Moving on, we then find that important period in human childhood that begins with the change of teeth and lasts until about the age of sexual maturity. Here again, if we free ourselves from all prejudices and look purely at the real development of the human being, at the real conditions of this development, we find that the most significant educational impulse for these years must be what we call authority. And a healthy education for these years comes about when the child is confronted during this time with adults in whom it has trust and faith, so that, without intervening with any vague intellectual ideas or immature criticism, it can form its principles and rules of conduct based on the authority of these people around it. The authoritative principle is the basic principle of education for these years. You will find what can be said to justify this in that little book. And when we then consider the human being up to the age of twenty or twenty-one, we find, through the basic conditions of his development, that the essential thing is what can be called intellectual maturity, and in particular looking up to an impersonal ideal grasped in the soul, that is, to a purely spiritual educational impulse that stands above what the person himself can be at this age. This is precisely the essence of the ideal, that we strive for it and always have the feeling, especially in youth, that we are not quite up to the ideal in our whole behavior and our whole being, that the ideal hovers above us like a heavenly image and we strive for it with the awareness that we can never actually attain it. And only when these periods of time are over does the human being enter that epoch of his earthly existence in which, basically, self-education can begin, or where, in the narrower sense of the word, one can speak of self-education. With the exception of the last, the third educational impulse, which is also such for young people that they take it as an ideal from the great impulses of world history, and that other human ideals are given to them, which they also adopt from outside, the remaining educational impulses, such as the authoritative principle, are based on an ideal, also on what can be called the relationship to something still foreign, to something that is assumed to be more perfect. The pupil thus faces the impulses that come to him for his education as something foreign; he looks up to them.