The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. The Art of Education Through an Understanding of Human Nature

[ 1 ] It might seem strange to discuss practical educational issues from the perspective of a very specific worldview—anthroposophical spiritual science. However, in this case, the impetus to discuss education stems from educational practice itself.

[ 2 ] You have just heard that the art of education about which I will take the liberty of speaking to you this evening is put into practice at the Waldorf School. And this Waldorf School has also made it possible to develop on a broader scale what could previously only be expressed in terms of ideas and objectives derived from the educational philosophy I advocate. A few years ago, when questions of education were—one might say—on everyone’s lips, the situation was that the Stuttgart industrialist Emil Molt wanted to found a school, initially for the children of his industrial enterprise. He turned to me to provide this school with an appropriate pedagogical content and direction. |

[ 3 ] At first, we were dealing with students from a very specific class and also with students from a specific society that upholds a particular worldview: we were dealing with the children of the proletariat employed at the Waldorf industrial enterprise, and we were dealing with a number of children from the Anthroposophical Society. But very soon, the scope of this school expanded. While we began with about one hundred fifty children in eight classes, we now have eleven classes with over seven hundred children. This led to my being invited in August of this year to give a series of lectures on the principles of this Waldorf school here in England, in Oxford, after some friends of the anthroposophical worldview had already come to the Goetheanum in Dornach at Christmas to attend a series of lectures there on this art of education. The Oxford lecture series then gave rise to the Education Union, which was founded here and which aims to introduce the educational principles I will be discussing this evening on a broader scale in England as well.

[ 4 ] I had to mention these considerations so that you would not get the impression tonight that we are dealing with theoretical debates, but rather so that you would understand that we are speaking from a truly practical approach to education. I felt it was all the more necessary to do so because, of course, I will only be able to offer a few brief insights this evening. The suggestions I will offer will inevitably be incomplete, since the educational principles I am discussing here are not a program but a practice. And when it comes to a practice, one can always cite only a few—I would say, for example—examples from that practice. Those who start from a program have it easier: they cite general statements, general maxims. This is precisely not possible with the particular nature of those educational principles on which Waldorf education is based. I have already said that this involves a foundation for pedagogy and education based on a spiritual-scientific worldview—a worldview that can lead to a genuine understanding of human nature and, through this, to a genuine understanding of the child’s essence.

[ 5 ] If a painter or any other artist wishes to practice his or her art, he or she must acquire two things. First—taking the painter as an example—he or she must develop a certain capacity for observation of form and color. He must be able to create from within the essence of color and form. He cannot proceed from theoretical knowledge; he can proceed only from a living inner experience of the essence of form and color. Only then does the second thing he must acquire come into play: the technique itself. In this context, anthroposophical spiritual science does not view education as a science, nor as theoretical knowledge, but as a true art—an art that deals with the noblest material we have in the world: with the human being itself, with the child, who in such a wondrous way reveals to us the deepest mysteries of the world by, year after year, indeed, one might say, from week to week, shows us how—through its physiognomy, its gestures, and all the other expressions of the child’s life—the spiritual and the soul-life emerge, which are deeply hidden within the child as a divine gift from the spiritual worlds. The perspective I am speaking of here is based on the premise that just as it is necessary for the painter to acquire a gift for observation—a gift for color and form that becomes active through his hands, his soul, and his spirit—so it is necessary for the educator to be able to trace the entire essence of the human being as it reveals itself in the child. But this is not possible unless one rises above the observation of what ordinary consciousness provides in terms of human observation, unless one can ascend to a true observation of the soul and spiritual life. And this is precisely what anthroposophical spiritual science aims to achieve. What is called “knowledge” today can actually deal only with what is physical, with what appeals to the senses. How do we, as human beings today, come to know the soul if we do not rise to a true spiritual understanding? Actually, only by becoming acquainted with the expressions and activities of the soul within ourselves. We come to know—by striving for self-observation—our thinking; we come to know our feeling, our willing. These are qualities of the soul. We possess the soul itself, I would say, only through judgment. We see the physical; we perceive the physical. We possess the soul only by forming a judgment from the qualities of our own inner being that something like a soul underlies us.

[ 6 ] Anthroposophical spiritual science, as I understand it here, does not proceed from this ordinary consciousness, but seeks to develop the powers lying dormant in the human soul in a completely systematic way, so that what emerges—please do not be alarmed by the expression—is a kind of exact clairvoyance. Through this, one looks beyond the qualities of the soul to the true nature of the soul. And one learns to recognize this soul through spiritual vision just as one learns to recognize sensory color through the eye and sensory sounds through the ears. But ordinary consciousness actually knows the spirit that reigns in the world only through inference. As long as we remain within ordinary consciousness, we can only say: We see natural phenomena and soul phenomena. From this, we conclude that a spiritual reality underlies all of this. Our thoughts are occupied with concluding that the physical is grounded in the soul and the spiritual. Anthroposophical spiritual science develops the powers slumbering in the soul—the spiritual-sensory organs, if I may use this paradoxical expression—through which one can not only gain access to the spirit but also experience it oneself in living thought.

[ 7 ] Only then—when one can perceive the soul and experience the spirit in living thought—can one gain true insight into human nature. Then, through spiritual science, such a living understanding of human nature comes about that can penetrate the human being, so that he can see in the growing child, at every moment of life, how the spiritual and the soul-life are at work within the child. He does not merely observe the child, if I may put it this way, from the outside through the senses, but he sees how the soul expresses itself in the sensory manifestations. For he proceeds from what is not merely a manifestation of the soul, but the very substance of the soul itself, which can be perceived just as color is perceived by the eyes. He proceeds from how the spirit works within the child, because he recognizes this—and because this recognition provides him with a science that grasps the spirit itself through living thought.

[ 8 ] Thus, this art of education of which I am speaking here is based on a living understanding of human nature, on a grasp of the child’s developing potential at every moment of life. Only when one looks through the human being in this way—I would say, the noblest material we can have for an art, the material for the art of education—only when one looks through the human being in this way, and truly works with the human being in an educational sense, does one see things quite different from what can be seen with ordinary consciousness. And then, drawing on such a science, one can provide teachers and educators with guidance on how, in their direct, practical interaction with the child, they can also cultivate that which can be perceived as the soul itself and experienced as the spirit itself.

[ 9 ] In the child—as keen observation shows—the spirit is present to no lesser degree than in the adult; but this spirit is locked deep within the child and must first conquer the body. And we gain an impression of the marvelous way in which the spirit—given to the child as a divine gift—works within the child’s organism when we can see this spirit for ourselves, before it speaks to us through language, before it can reveal itself to us through intellectual thinking. Then one gains an impression of how it is absolutely incorrect to say: the physical nature of the human being is one thing, the spiritual is another. In the child, one sees the physical nature in such a way that—much more than can ever be the case with an adult—the spiritual is at work within the physical, the spiritual completely permeating the physical. As adults, we possess spirit in that we need the spirit to think about the world. The child possesses spirit in that it needs the spirit to shape its own organism, like a spiritual sculptor. And far more than one might think, the human physical organism, throughout the entire subsequent earthly life, is a creation of what the spiritual essence enclosed within the child is doing precisely to this physical organism. To this end, allow me first to give you some concrete examples, so that I am not merely speaking in abstract terms.

[ 10 ] Anyone who views the child merely from the outside, through physical science—who looks at the child as the dissection table or conventional physiology presents its organization to us—rather than through spiritual insight—fails to see how every single action directed at the child affects and plays out within the child’s physical organism. Let me give an example: the child is yelled at; it is engaged in some activity, and an adult yells at it. Being yelled at by an adult makes a completely different impression on the child than when we yell at an adult. When we yell at the child, we must bear in mind that the child is organized quite differently from the adult. The adult has sensory organs on the surface of their organism; and controls what the sense organs provide through its intellect. From within, it shapes a fully developed will in response to sensory impressions. The child, however, is entirely devoted to the external world. The child is—if I may put it this way—and I do not mean this figuratively, but quite literally—the child is entirely sense organ. I would like to be very clear: Let us consider an infant. When we observe it with our external perception, it seems to us as though it were perceiving and viewing the world just as an adult does, except that its intellect and will are not yet as developed as those of an adult. That is not the case. The adult, so to speak, perceives taste only on the tongue and palate. What in the adult has already come to the surface of the organism penetrates the child’s organism much more deeply inward. The child, so to speak, becomes entirely a sensation of taste when it takes in food, just as it becomes entirely a sensation of light when light and colors enter its eyes. This is not merely a figure of speech; it is a reality: when a child is exposed to light, the light vibrates not only through its nervous system, but also through its breathing and its circulatory system; it vibrates throughout the entire organism, just as light acts solely in the eye of an adult. The child is, inwardly, entirely a sensory organ. And just as the eye is devoted to the world, living entirely in the light, so the child lives entirely within its surroundings. It carries the spirit within itself to take in, with its entire organism, whatever lives in its physical environment. Therefore, when we shout at the child, its organism is engaged in a very specific activity. Because we yell at it, something vibrates much more strongly within the child than is possible in an adult, who has counterforces stirring within. And what is brought about—a kind of stagnation in the child’s soul-spiritual life—is immediately transferred to the child’s physical constitution. And if we frequently yell at a child—or even frighten them—then we are not merely affecting the child’s soul; we are affecting the child’s entire physical constitution. The health of an adult into old age lies in our hands, depending on how we behave in the child’s environment.

[ 11 ] The most important educational influence on a child in early childhood is how adults behave in their surroundings. If the child is exposed to a constant, fast-paced life and hustle and bustle, to a sense of haste in its environment, then its entire physical constitution will simply internalize the tendency to rush inwardly. And anyone who is a good judge of character—able to base their observations on the spirit and the soul—can tell by looking at a child in their eleventh or twelfth year whether they have been raised in a restless, hurried environment, in an environment appropriate to their needs, or in an environment where the pace is too slow. We can see this in the child’s gait. If the child has been in a hurried environment, where everything proceeds at an excessive pace and impressions are constantly changing, the child walks with a light step. The way the child takes in its surroundings is imprinted in its physical constitution, right down to its gait and the way it walks. Conversely, if the child is in an environment that does not provide sufficient stimulation—one that constantly drives the child toward boredom—we see how the child goes through life later on with a gait that is far too heavy. I mention these examples because they are particularly striking, and because they show how the observation of human beings can be refined. From this example, we can see what we can impart to the child if we are able to observe it in the right way during its earliest years. For in this earliest stage of human life, the child is what I would like to call an imitative being with regard to its entire environment—an imitative being also in terms of what it is supposed to do in the spiritual realm and in the moral realm as well. I would also like to give an example of this.

[ 12 ] Anyone who has had a lot of experience with such things in life can certainly understand them. For example, a father once came to me and said: “Our boy has always been a good child up until now; he’s done everything that has met with our moral approval; but now he’s stolen money!” — Well, anyone who truly understands human nature will ask the following question in such a case: “Yes, but where did the child get the money?” — One is told: “From the cabinet.” — “Who takes money from the cabinet every day?” one asks further. — “The mother!” — The child has simply seen, day after day, that the mother took money from the cabinet. The child is an imitative being; as a soul-sensory organism, it is entirely attuned to its environment and, by setting its own nature in motion, does exactly what it sees in its surroundings. The child does not at all heed admonitions in early childhood; it does not follow rules and prohibitions—these do not take strong hold in its soul—but the child is guided solely by what it sees in its surroundings. Only, it observes much, much more closely than an adult, even if it does not bring what it sees into conscious awareness. And it imprints upon its organism what it observes in its surroundings. The entire organism becomes a reflection of what the child observes in its surroundings.

[ 13 ] Based on our current understanding, we greatly overestimate what we call heredity. When we observe a person’s characteristics later in life, we tend to say that most of them were inherited through purely physical transmission across generations. But anyone who is a true judge of human nature sees how a child’s muscles develop in response to the impressions of its environment—depending on whether we treat it gently and kindly, with love, or in some other way—and how the child’s breathing and blood circulation are shaped by the emotions it experiences. If the child frequently experiences someone in its environment approaching it with love—so that, through an instinctive shared experience with the parent, it adopts the rhythm demanded by the child’s inner being—then the child develops a healthy respiratory system in terms of its finer constitution. If you ask where the predispositions for a functional physical organism in an adult come from, then, to answer this question, look at what has influenced the child—who is a single, large sensory organ—from the environment: what has entered the muscles, the blood circulation, and the respiration from the words, the gestures, and the entire behavior of the child’s surroundings. You will see that the child is not merely an imitator when it comes to learning to speak—which is, of course, based entirely on imitation, and through which the child also first develops and strengthens its physical speech apparatus—but that the child, in its entire organism, and specifically in the finer structure of that organism, is, precisely in the physical realm, an imprint of what we accomplish in its environment.

[ 14 ] And so we can say: The way a person goes through life into old age—having developed their physical organism to a greater or lesser degree—and the extent to which a person can rely on their physical organism, is something they have to thank—or not to thank—the impressions that the environment knows how to make on the very young child.

[ 15 ] What I have just told you regarding the developing human being as an imitative being applies to the first stage of a child’s life—the period from birth through the loss of baby teeth, up to about the age of seven—which reveals itself to true understanding of human nature. In this seventh year, more changes occur for the child than is generally realized. What then takes place in the child’s development—and what must be understood as the foundation for true educational practice and the art of education—I will explain in the second part of this lecture, once the first part has been translated.

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[ 16 ] Around the age of seven, with the change of teeth, not only does this physical symptom of a transformation in human physical nature appear, but a complete transformation of the child’s soul also takes place. While the child, up until the change of teeth, is essentially an imitative being, and it is in the child’s nature to rely on the powers of imitation to develop its physical organism, around the age of seven—with the change of teeth—the child begins to feel the need to no longer be physically devoted to its surroundings, but rather to be able to devote itself to them spiritually. While everything in the child’s environment up until the change of teeth—I would say—penetrates into the depths of the child’s being, what penetrates the child during the second phase of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, is that which is built upon the natural authority of those who educate or instruct. This natural authority is expressed in the fact that the child does not, as it were, wish to learn—out of its very nature—the arts of adulthood, such as reading, writing, and the like, that are presented to it. It is an immeasurably great pedagogical error to believe that the child has even the slightest urge to acquire those things that serve as means of communication and means of revealing what you know—that is, what adults know! Everything that truly fosters development in the child is that which arises from loving devotion to this natural authority. When a child learns things—if they learn them at all—it is not for any reason inherent in the lesson itself; the child learns because they see that the adult knows and uses these things, and because they hear from the adult—who embodies the self-evident authority of the educator—that “this is what one ought to do correctly,” and so on. This extends all the way to moral principles.

[ 17 ] I have been able to show how, up until the change of teeth, a child’s moral development must also be acquired through imitation. From the age of seven to about fourteen—from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—everything must be absorbed through loving devotion to a natural authority. We must not approach the child in some intellectualistic way with a command: “This is good” or “This is evil”; rather, the child must grow up with the feeling that what the natural authority reveals to him as good is indeed good. And he must take a dislike to that which the natural authority presents to him as evil. No other reasons for the child’s approval or disapproval of good or evil should arise than those which the authority standing beside them reveals to the child as good or evil. Not because the matter itself appears good or evil to them intellectually, but because the educator deems it so. This is what must be essential to genuine, true education. What matters is that everything moral, and indeed everything religious, must be conveyed to the child—from the time of losing their baby teeth until sexual maturity—through human interaction. The human relationship of the teacher, the educator—that is what must be the crux of the matter. What we believe we are teaching the child by appealing to its power of judgment, we actually teach it in a way that kills much within the child’s inner being. Although the child is no longer merely a sensory being, it still has its entire soul within, even though its sensory organs have already been brought to the surface of the body. And it derives nothing from intellectualism—which somehow organically regulates the senses and subjects them to laws—but can surrender itself to the self-evident authority of the educator’s personality precisely when everything appears to it in an animated form.

[ 18 ] But this requires us to shape education—from the time children lose their baby teeth until they reach sexual maturity—in a thoroughly artistic way, taking an artistic approach in every aspect. When we introduce the child to the letters through which they are to learn to read and write, these letter forms today, in our present civilization, are such that the child has absolutely no connection or relationship to them. We know, after all, that in certain civilizations these letter forms originated from the pictorial imitation of external processes and things themselves; the world began with pictographic writing. In introducing writing to the child, we must once again start from the image. Therefore, in Stuttgart, within the Waldorf School’s Art of Education, we follow this principle: we do not begin with the letters as such at all, but rather start artistically with painting and drawing lessons. This is difficult for a child who enters school at the age of six or seven; but the difficulty will be overcome. And it will be overcome when we, in the right way and with our authority, stand alongside the child in such a way that the child actually feels within themselves: “What the teacher creates out of color and form, I want to imitate that too, because I want to become like him.” — Everything must be learned through this roundabout way. But this can only be learned if there is a genuine relationship between the teacher and the student—not merely outwardly but also inwardly—which infuses everything that is taught and imparted with artistic spirit. For it is precisely the intangible forces that operate between the educator and the child. It is not only the skills acquired through education and the like that are at work here; above all, it is disposition, emotional perception, and the teacher’s entire state of mind that are at work. But this can be given an appropriate direction if one is also able to approach the spiritual aspect of the world as a teacher.

[ 19 ] I’d like to use another example here to illustrate what I mean—an example I particularly like to use. Let’s assume we want to stimulate the child’s moral and religious development. This will generally occur, in the proper way, around the ninth or tenth year of life. In the kind of education I have in mind, one can clearly gauge from the child’s development what should be taught to them each year—indeed, each month. Let’s say I want to teach them, in their ninth or tenth year, a concept of the immortality of the human soul. I could talk about it in an intellectualistic way, but that will not only fail to make an impression on the child—it will even cause the child’s soul to wither; for when I lecture the child on moral and religious matters in an intellectualistic manner, nothing spiritual is involved! The spiritual realm is based on intangible forces that must operate between the teacher and the child. I can teach the child, through imagery, symbols, and artistic representations, what they are meant to experience regarding the immortality of the soul. I can say to them: Look at the butterfly chrysalis; the butterfly breaks through this chrysalis, flies out of it, and then moves about in the sunshine. — So it is with the human soul: it is within the human organism just as the butterfly is within the chrysalis; when a person passes through the gate of death, the soul leaves the organism and henceforth moves in the spiritual world.

[ 20 ] Now, there are two ways one might try to teach this to a child. As a teacher, one might naturally feel very clever and tell oneself: I am clever, the child is stupid; the child cannot understand what I, through my cleverness, have worked out for myself regarding the immortality of the soul. I’ll shape it into an image for the child; I’ll do my best to form this image.

[ 21 ] Yes, if I merely adjust the picture for the child and feel myself to be vastly superior to the picture, this will make an impression on the child that will soon fade away—an impression that will also wither away within the child. But I can relate to the child in a different way through my own emotional experience; I can say to myself: I myself believe in this image. I do not fabricate this image; the divine-spiritual powers themselves place the butterfly chrysalis and the fluttering butterfly into nature in order to set before me an image—a real image—that nature itself has placed into the world to represent what I am to comprehend as the immortality of the soul. The immortality of the soul appears to me on a simpler, more primitive level in the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. God Himself has wanted to show me this through the emerging butterfly. — Only when I can develop faith in my own images in this way does this peculiar, invisible, supersensible realm unfold between me and the child. And when I develop my own understanding with such depth of soul and present it to the child, then this image remains something that takes root in the child for the rest of their life and continues to develop. What we achieve when we are able to implement all of this through pictorial instruction between the loss of baby teeth and puberty is that we do not simply teach the child ready-made concepts that it is supposed to cling to, concepts that are meant to be as precise as possible. If we teach the child ready-made concepts, it is as if we were trying to harness its hand to a machine, so that it cannot develop freely. What matters is that we teach the child concepts that are internally flexible—concepts that grow like our limbs—so that what we develop before the child may become something entirely different in later decades: in the eighteenth, the twentieth, or the fortieth year of their life.

[ 22 ] However, these things can only be judged—and for such a person, this becomes a natural art of education—by someone who not only observes the child in the present and asks what needs and developmental capacities the child has, but who can also take a broad view of the whole of human life. Let me give you an example. Let’s assume we succeed in bringing the child to a point where, between the loss of baby teeth and puberty, we can draw out that inner devotion to the educator. I would like to illustrate, through an example, the strength that must come into play here. Anyone who understands such things knows what a blessing it is for their life, right into their later years, if during childhood they were in a position to hear from those around them about a much-revered relative whom they had not yet seen. One day, they are allowed to visit this relative. He makes his way to this relative with shy reverence, based on everything he has heard and the complete picture that has been painted for him. With shy reverence, he watches as the door is opened. There is something immense about gazing in this way upon something worthy of reverence. If one has been able to revere in this way, to look upon a human being in this way, it is something that takes deep root in the human soul, and from which one can still reap the fruits even in old age! But this is true of everything that is presented to the child in the form of vivid, living concepts—not forced upon it. Whoever achieves this with a child—that the child, with shy reverence, truly looks up to the educator as a natural authority—creates something within the child that will last into the very end of life, which I would like to express as follows: We know there are people who, once they have reached a certain age, are a blessing to those around them; their words need not be many at all—they have a blessing-like effect. It is something that permeates the voice; it is not the content of the words. It is a blessing for people to come into close contact with such individuals during their childhood. If we look back at such a person in their fifties or sixties and examine what was given to them in childhood—between the loss of baby teeth and puberty—and what they learned, we come to the conclusion that they learned to revere—a moral reverence that taught them to look up in the right way, religiously, to the higher powers of the world; a person who, if I may put it that way, learned to pray in the right way. For those who have learned to pray in the right way, what they learned inwardly through reverence transforms in old age into blessing forces—the forces through which they can be a source of good to those around them. And I would like to say, to put it as vividly as possible: The person who never learned as a child to fold their hands in prayer will never, in their entire life, be able to develop the strength to spread their hands in blessing.

[ 23 ] The point is not that we form some abstractly acquired ideas and cram them into the child, but that we know how to proceed with the child if we want to instill in its soul something that will be of fruitful significance for its entire life. And so we will not introduce abstract reading and writing directly to the child, but will begin with writing—though from an artistic perspective—by allowing everything that exists in the world in the form of abstract letters to emerge from the image. By first teaching the child to write in this way, we meet the child’s need to engage not only their powers of observation, but their whole being—not just their head. We will first teach the child to write; for when the child approaches writing in this way—engaging their whole being, not merely their head, through the image—we are giving them what is right. Once they have learned to write in this way, they can then learn to read.

[ 24 ] Anyone who is too deeply entrenched in today’s school system will say: Yes, but then the child will learn to read and write more slowly than they have up to now. — But the question is whether the pace followed today is the right one! Fundamentally, it is only right for a child to be introduced to reading after the age of eight! So that everything is developed out of the creative and artistic.

[ 25 ] Anyone who has become a true judge of character through a genuine insight into the human soul and spirit will be able to observe people with the utmost subtlety, and from that observation the art of education will flow. Let’s suppose we have a child who steps too heavily with his or her feet on the ground; this stems from the fact that the child was influenced in an inappropriate way on a soul level before the change of teeth. But we can still make up for much of this by introducing artistic elements from within—through the images we inspire—and allowing what the child has formed up to the time of tooth replacement to come to life after that point. Therefore, one who is a true connoisseur of human nature will preferably engage a child with a heavy, forceful gait by drawing the child artistically toward painting and drawing. In contrast, a child with a gait that is too light and dance-like: the child’s entire future character development—and profoundly deep moral qualities—depend on our stimulating such a child more toward music. And so, in each individual case, if we can look deeply into the child’s being, we can determine how to introduce what we pour into the picture.

[ 26 ] We can say that, until the child’s teeth begin to fall out, the child’s immediate, natural environment will be that of his or her parents and family. But we must supplement this through elementary schools and kindergartens. We can only do what is right through what we are meant to develop as play and as childlike activity if we understand how this enters the child’s physical organism. Just imagine how a child who, for example, is given a ready-made doll—a so-called “beautiful” doll that even has a beautifully painted face, in other words, is as “finished” as possible—how such a child—these things cannot be observed through gross anatomy—develops thick blood, and how its physical constitution is disrupted. We have no idea how gravely we are sinning here, how this affects the child! If we put the doll together ourselves from a few scraps of cloth, making it right there beside the child, and paint the eyes onto the doll’s features so that the child can witness this process of creation and movement unfolding before them, then the child absorbs this into the vitality of their organism; it passes into their blood, into their respiratory system.

[ 27 ] For example, suppose we are dealing with a melancholic child; anyone who, without any insight into the soul, merely observes the child outwardly will say: a melancholic child, dark inside—we must introduce very vivid colors into their surroundings, make their toys as red and yellow as possible, and dress them in clothes that are as bright as possible, so that the child is awakened and invigorated by the bright colors. — No, that won’t work! For, you see, that will only cause an inner shock in the child, driving virtually all its life forces in the opposite direction. We must place blue or blue-violet colors and playthings in the vicinity of a child who is melancholic and withdrawn; whereas we stimulate a child who is inwardly active by introducing bright colors into their surroundings. In this way, the child brings its own organism into harmony with its surroundings, and it finds healing—for whatever in it may be too flighty or too nervous—precisely through the liveliness and brightness of its environment.

[ 28 ] In this way, one can derive—down to the very finest detail, right down to the practical, hands-on guidance needed in daily life—what needs to be done in terms of education and instruction for the child, based on a genuine understanding of human nature. When one educates in this way, one will come to realize that, fundamentally speaking, it may indeed correspond to the notions we form about what a child should learn at this or that age, what we should instill in them, and how we should engage them. But anyone who knows that the child can nevertheless take from its surroundings only what is predisposed within its organism will say to themselves: Let us suppose a child is predisposed not to engage continuously in robust, outward activity, but rather to work on something on a small scale—I would say, to work in a way that leans toward the artistic. If one allows this child—because one is stubbornly set on it—to engage in vigorous external work, then precisely those inclinations within the child that are suited to finer work will wither away; and those inclinations that one wishes to cultivate—because one imagines them to be universally human, because one believes they must be cultivated in every human being—will wither away all the more. The child does not care about this; it carries out the work between the loss of baby teeth and puberty, but nothing remains within it—nothing grows within the child from what is grafted into it in this way. In every respect, the educational principle at issue here depends on the educator having a keen sense of what is present in the child, and on the educator knowing, at every moment, how to do the right thing based on his or her teaching instinct, drawing on what he or she observes in the child physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

[ 29 ] In this way, the teacher will actually be able to adapt the educational approach to the child as he or she grows. In Waldorf education, the curriculum is derived from the child. Everything that does not have to be rushed through—not just from year to year, but from month to month and week to week—must be derived from the child, so that the child can be given what his or her inner nature demands. The teaching profession is one that demands the greatest selflessness; it therefore does not tolerate having any kind of preconceived program and must be entirely focused on treating the child in such a way that, through the relationship one has with the child—by standing alongside them—one essentially creates only the opportunity for the child to develop on their own.

[ 30 ] This can be done most effectively from the ages of seven to fourteen—precisely during the years of compulsory elementary schooling—if one completely refrains from appealing to the intellect and instead channels everything into the artistic realm. In this way, the physical, as well as the emotional, and even that which is meant to develop the spiritual, can be embodied in images at this age. We should, in particular, embody moral values in images when the child is nine or ten years old. We should not issue moral commandments, nor say, “This is good” or “That is evil”—but rather present good people to the child, bringing them close to the child, so that the child may develop a sympathy for what is good. Or we should present evil people to the child, so that the child may develop an antipathy toward what is evil. Through imagery, we can awaken the moral essence within the child’s soul.

[ 31 ] These are, however, only hints. I wanted to offer them with regard to the second stage of human life. How all of this then develops into a fundamental education—not merely an education for the brief period of childhood, but for the entirety of human life—is what I intend to discuss in the third, very brief part of my lecture, once the second part has been translated.

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[ 32 ] You will best be able to see how the art of education described here is intended to have the proper effect—from childhood onward, throughout a person’s entire life, from birth to death—by examining the specific case of education through the so-called art of eurythmy. What has been presented as the art of eurythmy in public performances in London in recent days is something that also has a pedagogical and didactic aspect.

[ 33 ] The art of eurythmy consists in drawing movements from the depths of human nature—whether from an individual or a group of people—in such a way that everything that occurs in these movements flows naturally from the human organism in the same way as spoken language or singing. In this art of eurythmy, every single gesture and every single facial expression is by no means arbitrary; rather, it constitutes a genuine, visible language, so that through certain movements one can “sing” eurythmically—that is, visibly—just as one can speak. What is held back in spoken language in terms of the whole person’s potential for movement—and what is merely transformed into an audible sound—is developed into a visible language in the art of eurythmy.

[ 34 ] We have now introduced eurythmy in the Waldorf school, from the lowest elementary school grade all the way up to the highest. And it is evident that the child truly immerses itself in this visible language, where—just as a sound signifies something as a spiritual expression in audible language—every finger movement, every hand movement, and every movement of the entire body is in fact a real linguistic sound, only one that is visible. One can see that children, from the age of tooth replacement and beyond, up to puberty, immerse themselves in this language just as naturally as they did in spoken language when they were very young. It becomes evident that its entire organism—body, soul, and spirit—for eurythmy is at the same time spiritual-psychic exercise, spiritual-psychic gymnastics—finds its way into this eurythmic language with the same natural ease as it did into spoken language; that it senses that through this it is given something that flows directly from its entire organism. But with this, alongside gymnastics—which derives its essence more from the observation of the external physical body—eurythmy introduces, through the observation of the spiritual and soul aspects, something in which the human being, in every movement, experiences himself not only as a body, as a body imbued with soul, but as a soul imbued with spirit within a body shaped by the soul. Furthermore, what a person experiences as the art of eurythmy has, on the one hand, an immensely vital effect on all the potential within them, and on the other hand, an equally fruitful and effective impact on their entire life.

[ 35 ] No matter how well you have the child perform physical exercises—if these exercises are done solely according to the body’s rules—you will not, through the practice of these exercises, protect the child, let’s say, in later life from all kinds of metabolic diseases, rheumatism itself, and other illnesses that later develop into metabolic diseases. For what one gains from gymnastics tends to densify the physical body. But what you gain by drawing every single movement from the spirit and the soul—that is what makes the spirit and the soul the masters of the spiritual and the physical for the rest of one’s life. Mere external gymnastics will not prevent the sixty-year-old body from becoming frail. But if you educate the child in such a way that you allow its movements to arise from the soul as a form of gymnastics, you prevent the body from becoming frail in its sixtieth year—even if it would otherwise have become so—by providing pictorial instruction between the loss of baby teeth and puberty, allowing this image, which would otherwise occupy the soul, to be transferred spiritually and soulfully into the body. Thus, this pictorial language is nothing other than gymnastics imbued with soul and spirit. But this shows you that this soul-infused and spirit-infused gymnastics aims to develop the child equally in body, soul, and spirit, so that what is laid down during childhood bears fruit throughout their entire life. We can only do this if we feel like the gardener who tends a plant: he does not seek to interfere with the flow of sap or artificially graft anything onto it; rather, he creates the external conditions so that the plant can develop on its own; he has a natural, instinctive reluctance to interfere with the plant’s inner growth. We must have this reverent reluctance toward what seeks to develop into life within the child. Thus, for example, we will not always focus one-sidedly on teaching the child something. The principle of authority, as I have described it, must flow into the child’s soul in the deepest sense. And it must be such that the child has the opportunity to take in things that it cannot yet grasp intellectually, but accepts them because it loves the teacher. Then we do not deprive the child of the opportunity, later on, to have an experience that it would otherwise not have. If I had already understood everything as a child, then I would not have an experience such as the following: Let’s suppose that, at the age of thirty-five, something presents itself to me in such a way that I realize I had once accepted this or that idea from a beloved teacher, from a beloved authority—out of respect for that authority and out of loving trust—but now that I am more mature, a whole new understanding of it dawns on me! This fact—that in maturity one can return to something one had previously taken in but had not yet fully grasped, and which is now brought to life through maturity—brings inner satisfaction and strengthens the will. We must not take this away from a person if we have the necessary respect for their freedom and wish to educate them as free beings. Educating human beings as free beings is the foundation of the educational principle referred to here. Therefore, we should not impose a development of the will upon the child through intellectual-moral judgments. We must be clear that if we instill moral views in the child’s mind—roughly between the ages of seven and fourteen—as the mind develops sympathy and antipathy, then, when the child has reached sexual maturity and faces life, it will see through the intellectual-moral sentiment and what it wills—that which permeates the will, that which, springing from the will, enlivens the previously developed aesthetic sense in relation to morality—and that, by being kindled from the freedom of life, this very thing gives the human being strength and inner security.

[ 36 ] You see, anyone who wishes to apply the proper art of education in the sense intended here does not focus solely on childhood; rather, they look to the human being, even if that person has reached the very end of life. For they want what they plant within people to truly behave like a flower that grows and flourishes from its inner natural conditions. When we plant a flower, we cannot expect it to develop quickly; rather, we wait for it to develop slowly—from the root to the stem, to the leaves, and finally to the blossom and fruit—and to unfold freely in the light of the sun. This is what we hold before us as the goal of proper educational art. We want to nurture within the child what is the root of life, but we want to nurture it in such a way that, little by little and flexibly, life is transformed from within—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—through what we cultivate during childhood and adolescence. Then we can be certain that, with full respect for human freedom, we are setting the human being—precisely as a free being—into the world through our education in such a way that what is truly the root of education develops freely—not through our forcing knowledge upon them in a way that turns them into slaves— so that even in later life, even under the most varied circumstances, if they wish to be a free human being, they can develop accordingly.

[ 37 ] However, these educational principles place the greatest demands on the teacher. They do; but can we even assume that what is, first and foremost, the most perfect being in this world here on earth—the human being—can be dealt with in a simplistic manner without truly delving into the peculiarities of this being with full immersion? Should we not believe that, precisely when it comes to human beings, what we do for them must be something like reverence, and in some respects a kind of religious service? We must believe that the art of education demands the greatest selflessness from us—that we must be able to forget ourselves completely and immerse ourselves in the child’s very being in order to see, even in the child, what is to blossom for the world in the adult human being. Selfless discernment and a genuine willingness to delve deeply into human nature in order to gain a true understanding of humanity—these are the fundamental prerequisites for the true art of education.

[ 38 ] Why shouldn’t we recognize it as a necessity to devote ourselves to such an art of education, when we must admit that, of all aspects of human life—from which it is, after all, derived—education is the noblest! Education is the noblest aspect of all human life on earth.

[ 39 ] That is, after all, progress. The very progress that we foster through education consists in ensuring that the younger generations, gifted to us from the divine worlds, are developed through what we, as the older generation, have developed in ourselves—so that this younger generation takes a further step in the progress of humanity, going beyond us. Should it not seem right to anyone of discernment that, by serving humanity in this way—by sacrificing the best and most beautiful aspects of the older generation for the sake of the younger generation—one is also practicing the art of education in the most beautiful and most humane way?