The Development and Education of the Human Being in the Light of Anthroposophy

What I have described is only a rough sketch, but it can be observed from day to day in a new form in the child through the pedagogical instinct that arises from working with the child. Through this, one can see how the child's life unfolds; one can see what dictates what you, as an educator, should bring to the child each week, each month, and that you let the human being's inner being dictate what you, as an educator, should bring to the child. For example, when you first send your child to primary school, it is only natural that he or she should have an aversion to learning to read and write. And that is understandable. Consider that these strange signs, which we call letters and by which we read and write, which are something completely foreign to the human being, have emerged from the original characters in a long cultural development. The original writing emerged from the images and signs of what it represented; it was even closer in expression to what it meant; it was still similar to what one perceived directly. The child who comes to school and is supposed to learn the derived characters feels no affinity with the characters that are foreign to his or her perception. This understanding only awakens with sexual maturity and is quite different from that between the sixth and eighth years and between the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth years of life. The child, because it is only there emotionally, relies on the pictorial, which presents itself to it in the same way as sensory perception and sensory vision. If we recognize this, then we will introduce the right educational impulses for this age; but then we must move on to those things that we have introduced in our school in Stuttgart. The aim is to bring the child to a stage where they can draw by painting and paint by drawing. They should not be engaged only with their heads and eyes, but with their whole being. It is amazing what emerges in terms of pictorial quality when children draw and paint. If this is properly directed, it is possible to develop the letters, writing and reading from what is close to the children. We learn to read after learning to write because reading only involves the head, whereas writing involves the whole person.