The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] You will not only have to become teachers and educators at the Waldorf School, but—if things go as they should—you will also have to become defenders of the entire Waldorf School system. For you will, after all, know much more precisely what the Waldorf school actually aims for than can ever be conveyed to the outside world, whether near or far. But in order for you to be true defenders of what the Waldorf School strives for—and of what it aims to achieve for general spiritual culture—you will have to be able to carry out this defense against contemporary opinions, even when those opinions are hostile or merely critical. Therefore, I must include an episode in this pedagogical-didactic discussion of ours, one that will, however, follow quite naturally from what we have already explored in our previous lessons on didactics.

[ 2 ] You know that, even in the field of education, much is now expected of so-called experimental psychology. Experiments are being conducted on people to determine how gifted a person may be in terms of concept formation and memory, and now even for volition, although this, by its very nature, can only be ascertained indirectly, since volition occurs during sleep, and what a person experiences in sleep can be detected only indirectly using electrical equipment in a psychological laboratory—just as what a person experiences in sleep cannot be directly observed experimentally. So such experiments are being conducted. Do not think that I have any objection to such experiments in general. These experiments can be significant as the tendrils of science, as its outer offshoots. One can learn all sorts of interesting things through such experiments, and I certainly do not wish to condemn them wholesale. I wish that everyone who so desires could have access to such psychological laboratories and conduct their experiments there. But we must take a closer look at the emergence of this experimental psychology, as it is recommended in particular by the educator Meumann, who, in essence, also follows the Herbartian school.

[ 3 ] Why is experimental psychology practiced today? Because we have lost the ability to observe human beings directly. We can no longer rely on the forces that connect human beings to one another—and thus also to children—on an inner level. Therefore, people seek to discover, through external arrangements and external experiments, how to deal with the developing child. As you can see, both our pedagogy and our didactics take a much more inner path. This is also urgently needed for the present and the near future of humanity. While, on the one hand, the drive toward experimental psychology arises, on the other hand, this experimental psychology also leads to a renewed failure to recognize certain simple facts of life. I would like to illustrate this with an example.

[ 4 ] In recent times, these experimental psychologists and educators have been particularly interested in what they call the “process of comprehension”—for example, the process of comprehension that occurs during reading, when reading any given text. In order to understand this process of comprehension, researchers have attempted to work with test subjects, as they say. What is carried out in great detail can be summarized briefly as follows. A text is presented to a test subject—a child or an older adult—and researchers then examine, for example, what the child would do most effectively first in order to achieve the fastest comprehension. It is found that the most effective approach is to first “prepare” the text, that is, to first introduce the subject to the meaning of the text. Then, through numerous experiments, one proceeds to have the test subject perform what is called “passive reception.” Thus, after the meaning has been grasped through preparation, passive reception is to take place. For through this passive reception of a reading passage, what is called “anticipatory learning” is to take place: repeating once more, in free mental activity, what was first prepared and then passively received. And then, as the fourth act of this drama, there should follow the retrieval of everything that has remained uncertain—that is, what has not yet fully entered into the human mental and spiritual life. If, in the correct sequence, one allows the test subject first to familiarize themselves with the meaning of a text, then to passively absorb it, then to engage in anticipatory learning, and finally to seek out parts that have not yet been fully grasped, one can observe that this is the most effective way to comprehend, read, and retain what has been read. — — Do not misunderstand me: I mention this precisely because I must address the fact that people today so often talk past one another, for one can intend to describe the same thing using the most contradictory words. That is why experimental psychologists will say: It is precisely through such a dedicated method that one arrives at what one should do in pedagogy. -But anyone who has a deeper understanding of the whole human being knows that this approach does not lead to genuine pedagogical work—any more than dissecting a beetle allows one to reassemble the living beetle from its individual parts. That is impossible. Nor is it possible when one applies the methods of anatomy to the activity of the human soul. It is, of course, interesting and can be extraordinarily fruitful scientifically in other respects: to dissect the activities of the human soul—but it does not make one an educator! That is why, in truth, no new foundation for pedagogy will emerge from this experimental psychology; such a foundation can only arise from an inner understanding of the human being.

[ 5 ] I had to say this so that you wouldn’t misinterpret what I’m about to say—a statement that, of course, greatly annoys people who cling to current opinions, a statement that is, of course, one-sided in its own way, but one that must be supplemented precisely because of its one-sidedness. What, then, do experimental psychologists gain after they have psychologically dissected—or, in fact, rather tortured—a test subject in this way—for this procedure is by no means pleasant when performed on a person—what do they actually gain from it? They have produced what they consider to be an extraordinarily significant result, one that is repeatedly highlighted in bold type in educational handbooks as a conclusion that has been reached. This statement reads roughly as follows, if I translate it into proper German: That one retains a reading passage better when one has understood its meaning than when one has not understood it. — To put it in scientific terms, this has been researched: it is advisable to first grasp the meaning of a reading passage, because then the passage is learned more easily. Now I must voice this heretical statement: Insofar as this statement is correct, I could have known it beforehand, for I would like to know which person with common sense would not already know that a text is better retained when one has understood its meaning than when one has not. — That is, in fact, the point of the findings of experimental psychology: that they bring to light things that are terribly self-evident. The self-evident truths found in textbooks on experimental psychology are sometimes such that only those who have already trained themselves to accept both the gripping and the rather tedious aspects of scientific work can engage with them. One is already trained to do this when one is conditioned to it in elementary school, for even in elementary school this shortcoming is recognized—albeit to a lesser extent there—not to mention in higher education.

[ 6 ] This heretical statement applies particularly to educators: that, in a certain sense, it goes without saying that, if one is to retain something, one must first have understood its meaning. But now comes something else: that what one has taken in through the senses affects only contemplation, only thinking cognition; and that by elevating things to the level of the senses, one draws people one-sidedly toward the mere contemplation of the world, toward thinking cognition. And if we were to teach solely in the sense of this statement, we would produce people who would all be weak-willed. The statement is therefore correct in a certain sense, yet not entirely correct. For it would have to be phrased as follows: If you wish to do the very best for a person’s thinking cognition, you do so by analyzing the meaning of everything they are to take in. - And indeed, if one were to focus one-sidedly on first analyzing the meaning of everything, one could go a long way toward educating people’s way of viewing the world. But one would never thereby educate the willing human being, for the will cannot be educated by bringing the meaning of a thing into the bright light. The will wants to sleep, and it does not want to be fully awakened in such a way that, I might say, the meaning is revealed everywhere in an immodest manner. And herein lies the fact that the very necessity of life breaks through this simple truth of revealing meaning, so that we must also do with the child those things that do not give cause to reveal the meaning. Then we educate them in the will.

[ 7 ] The indiscretion involved in the one-sided application of the revelation of meaning has been particularly evident in movements such as the Theosophical Movement. You know how much I have argued over the years against a certain form of impropriety in the theosophical realm. I have even had to witness, for example, “Hamlet”—a pure work of art—being interpreted in the language of theosophical charlatanism: “This is Manas, that is the ‘I,’ the other is the astral body; this character is this, that character is that.” — Such interpretations were particularly popular. I have railed against them because it is a sin against human life to interpret symbolically that which is meant to be received immediately and intuitively as art. This imposes a meaning on things in an ill-mannered way, elevating them to the realm of mere contemplation, where they should not be elevated. All of this stems from the fact that the actual theosophical movement is a movement of decadence. It is the outermost offshoot of a declining culture; it is not something that, in its entire outlook, has anything to do with anthroposophy. Anthroposophy aims to be the opposite of this: an ascending movement, the beginning of an ascent. That is a radical difference. That is why so much is produced in the theosophical sphere that is, at its core, a manifestation of the utmost decadence. But the fact that there are people at all who manage to interpret *Hamlet* symbolically with regard to the individual characters stems from the fact that we have been so terribly poorly educated, that we have strived so hard to be educated solely in terms of meaning.

[ 8 ] Human life makes it necessary that education be based not merely on the intellect, but on what is experienced unconsciously by the will: rhythm, tempo, melody, the harmony of colors, repetition—in short, engaging in activity without grasping its meaning. If you have the child repeat sentences that, given their age, they are far from understanding, if you cause them to memorize these sentences purely by rote, then you are certainly not influencing their understanding—because you cannot address the meaning, which must reveal itself later—but you are influencing their will, and that is precisely what you should do, what you must do. On the one hand, you must try to introduce the child to things that are primarily artistic: music, drawing, sculpture, and so on; but on the other hand, you must also teach the child what can have meaning in abstract form in such a way that, at first, the child does not yet understand the meaning—but will only do so later in life—because the child has absorbed it through repetition and can remember it, and with greater maturity will then grasp what it could not grasp before. In this way, you have influenced their will. And in particular, you have also influenced their feelings through this—and you really shouldn’t forget that. Just as feeling—whether considered from a psychological or a spiritual perspective—lies between volition and thinking, so too does educational activity directed toward feeling lie between the measures that must be taken for cognitive thinking and those that must be taken for volition and its development. For cognitive thinking, we must certainly undertake those activities in which the key is to reveal meaning: reading, writing, and so on; for volitional action, we must cultivate everything in which the focus is not merely on interpreting meaning, but on immediate engagement by the whole person: artistic activities. What lies between the two will primarily influence the development of feeling and the formation of the soul. This development of the soul is truly influenced very strongly when the child is enabled to first take in something purely by memory, without understanding it, and without quibbling over its meaning—even though a meaning does exist—so that only after some time, when the child has matured through other measures and then recalls it, can the child understand what was previously absorbed. This is a subtlety in educational work that must, however, be taken into account if one wishes to educate deeply feeling people. For feeling enters into life in a peculiar way. People should also observe in this area. They just don’t really observe. I want to give you an observation that you can easily make, albeit with some diligence.

[ 9 ] Imagine you are trying to understand Goethe’s state of mind in 1790. You can do this if you focus, by selecting just a few of the works that Goethe produced specifically in 1790. After all, at the end of every edition of Goethe’s works, you’ll find a chronological list of his poems, arranged in the order in which they were written. So you take out the poems he wrote in 1790 and the plays he wrote that year, and examine them. You’ll recall that it was precisely in that year that he completed his beautiful treatise *The Metamorphosis of Plants*; you’ll remember that it was then that he first conceived the idea for *The Theory of Colors*; from all this, you’ll get a sense of his state of mind in 1790 and ask yourself: What was going on in Goethe’s inner life in 1790? You will only be able to answer that if you take a close look at everything that preceded this in Goethe’s life from 1749 to 1790 and at what followed after that year—what Goethe did not yet know at the time, but what you now know—from 1790 to 1832, that is, until his death. Then you will discover the remarkable fact that the state of mind in the year 1790 is a interplay between what lies ahead—what a person is only just beginning to acquire—and what has gone before—what they have already experienced. This is an extraordinarily significant observation. People shy away from it only because it leads into realms that, understandably, one is reluctant to explore for such observations. Try to extend your observation in this way to the soul life of a person who has recently passed away and whom you knew for a long time. If you train yourself in the finer art of soul observation, you will then experience the following. A friend of yours passed away, let’s say in 1918. You had known him for quite some time, so you may ask yourself: What was his state of mind in 1912? If you take into account everything you know about him, you will find that his soul’s disposition in 1912 was such that the preparation for his imminent death unconsciously played a part in his soul’s disposition at that time; it unconsciously played a part in his emotional life. And I call the emotional life, taken as a whole, the soul’s disposition. A person who is about to die has a completely different state of mind than one who still has a long life ahead of them.

[ 10 ] Now you will understand that people do not like to observe these things, for it makes quite an unpleasant impression, to say the least, when one notices, for example, that a person’s imminent death is reflected in the state of their soul. And indeed it is. But it is not good for ordinary life either that people notice such things. Therefore, it is usually hidden from this life, just as the will—being dormant—is hidden from waking consciousness even while one is awake. But the educator must, in a sense, set himself apart from ordinary life. He must not shy away from standing alongside his ordinary life and incorporating into his pedagogical work truths that also have something unsettling, something tragic, for ordinary life. In this regard, there is a need to make up for lost ground, particularly in the Central European educational system. You know that, especially in the earlier decades of this Central European educational and teaching life, high school teachers were still personalities upon whom the so-called “man of the world” looked down with a certain air of superiority. Unworldly, pedantic people who could not quite bring themselves to face the world, who always wore long coats instead of tuxedos, and so on—these were the former educators of the youth, particularly the older teenagers. Things have changed in recent times. University professors have begun to wear proper tuxedos, to venture out into the world, so to speak, and it is regarded as a great step forward that the former state of affairs has finally been overcome. That is good. But it must also be overcome in another direction; in the future, it must be overcome so that this detachment from life does not consist merely, as it did in the past, in the educator always appearing in a long, pedantic coat while other people were wearing tuxedos. This detachment from life may remain in a certain sense, but it should be linked to a deeper outlook on life than can be embraced by those who put on a tuxedo for specific purposes. I am, of course, speaking only figuratively, for I have nothing against the tuxedo.

[ 11 ] An educator must be able to look at life more deeply; otherwise, he will never be able to treat the developing human being appropriately and effectively. Therefore, he will also have to take in truths such as the one just described. Life itself, in a certain sense, demands that it contain mysteries. Certainly, we do not need diplomatic secrets for the immediate future. But for the sake of education, we need knowledge of certain mysteries of life. The ancient mystery teachers preserved such mysteries of life in an esoteric manner because they could not be directly revealed to life itself. But in a certain sense, every teacher must have truths that they cannot directly share with the world, because the world—which lives outside the realm of education—would be led astray in its bold strides if it were to encounter such truths on a daily basis. But you do not fully understand how to treat the developing child if you are unable to judge: what effect will have on the child what you communicate to it—something it does not yet fully understand at its present level of maturity, but which it will understand when you return to the subject later and can then explain not only what it perceives now, but also what it has already absorbed within itself. This has a very strong effect on the child’s disposition. Therefore, every good school should adhere as fully as possible to the principle that, as long as possible, the teacher should retain their students: taking them on in the first grade, keeping them in the second grade, moving up with them in the third year, and so on, as far as the school’s facilities allow. And the teacher who taught the eighth grade this year should then take over the first grade again the following year. For sometimes it takes years before one can properly revisit what was instilled in the children’s souls years ago. Under any circumstances, the development of the soul suffers when children are handed over each year to a different teacher who does not himself carry forward what he instilled in the children in earlier years. It is an essential part of the didactics of teaching that the teacher progresses through the school grades alongside the students. Only in this way can one respond to the rhythm of life. And life, in the broadest sense, has a rhythm. This is evident even in everyday activities, and indeed in the ordinary routines of daily life. If you have gotten into the habit—for example, over the course of just one week—of eating a butter roll every day at half past ten in the morning, then you will likely already be craving that butter roll at that hour by the second week. That is how deeply the human organism attunes itself to a rhythm. But it is not just the physical body; the whole person is predisposed toward rhythm. That is why it is also good to be able to recognize rhythmic repetition in the overall course of life—and this is what we are dealing with when we raise and teach children. That is why it is good to keep in mind how even specific educational themes can be revisited every year. So choose topics to cover with the children, make a note of them, and return to something similar each year. This can be done even with more abstract concepts. You teach—as I mean to say, in a way appropriate to the child’s mind—addition in the first grade; you return to addition in the second grade and teach more about it; in the third grade, you return to it again as well. So that the same activity takes place repeatedly, but only in progressive repetitions.

[ 12 ] This attunement to the rhythm of life is of particular importance for all education and all teaching—far more important than the constant emphasis: “You must structure all lessons in a meaningful way so that you reveal, in a subtle manner, everything contained in what is being presented.” —- One can only begin to grasp what this requires by gradually developing a sense of life. But then, especially as an educator, one will move very far away from what is often pursued today in a superficial manner—precisely through experimentation—even in the field of education. Again, not to condemn, but to improve certain practices that have gone too far to the detriment of our spiritual culture, I highlight such things. You can, for example, consult educational manuals today that incorporate findings obtained through experiments on test subjects regarding memory. In these experiments, the test subjects are treated in quite peculiar ways. They try to determine how the subjects can retain what they have taken in through their senses; then they write down a series of words that make no sense in context, have the subjects memorize them, and so on. These experiments to determine the laws of memory are conducted on a very large scale today. Once again, something has emerged that is now being recorded in scientific form as propositions. Just as, for example, in physics one records Gay-Lussac’s law or others, so too does one seek to record such laws in experimental pedagogy or psychology. There you will find, for example, a very scholarly discussion—which, it is said, stems from a certain scientific longing that is entirely justified—of the fact that there are different forms of memory: first, memory that acquires information easily or with difficulty; second, memory that reproduces information easily or with difficulty. So, first, one subjects a test subject to a grueling process to determine that there are people who acquire information easily and those who do so with difficulty; then, one subjects other test subjects to a grueling process to determine that there are people who recall what they have learned easily or with difficulty. Research has now shown that there are forms of memory characterized by ease or difficulty in acquisition, and others characterized by ease or difficulty in recalling or reproducing what has been learned. Third, there are forms of memory that can be described as faithful and accurate; fourth, extensive memory; fifth, a lasting or sufficient memory, in contrast to one that forgets easily. — This corresponds very well to the desire for systematization in modern science. We now have the scientific findings. We can say: What has been scientifically investigated in exact psychology regarding the forms of memory? And we know: First, there is a form of memory that acquires information easily or with difficulty; second, one that reproduces it easily or with difficulty; third, there is a faithful or accurate memory as opposed to an unfaithful or inaccurate one; fourth, a comprehensive memory, that is, people who can retain long passages of text as opposed to those who can retain only short ones; fifth, a lasting memory that may still retain things even after years, as opposed to one that forgets quickly.

[ 13 ] Despite all due respect for the scientific approach—which devotedly and truly very conscientiously subjects countless test subjects to harsh treatment, employing the most astute methods to arrive at its results—so that now, in pedagogy as well, now that it has been discovered through experimental psychology with children, we know which different forms of memory must be distinguished—despite all due respect for such a science, I would nevertheless like to say: Who, if endowed with a modicum of common sense, does not know that there are people who find it easy or difficult to commit things to memory, who find it easy or difficult to recall them, and then there are those who recount things faithfully and accurately, in contrast to those who muddle everything when they retell a story; that there are people with an extensive memory who can retain a long story, as opposed to those who can retain only a short one, and that there are also people who can retain something for a long time—even for years—and others who have forgotten everything again after eight days? It is, after all, a rather old piece of common-sense wisdom! Yet it is once again being researched in a field of science that commands everyone’s respect, for the methods employed therein are highly ingenious—there is simply no denying that.

[ 14 ] Now, two things can be said: First, it is better to cultivate common sense above all else in teaching and education rather than to subject children to such experiments, which, while they may develop their sharpness of mind to a great degree, will not bring them into contact with the unique qualities of each child. But one can also say something else: It is actually a sad state of affairs in our age when one must assume that those whom we intend to make teachers and educators have so little common sense that they must first learn, through a long detour, such things as the existence of the various types of memory we have just described. These things must also be regarded as symptoms of what has become of our intellectual culture.

[ 15 ] I had to bring these things to your attention. Because you will find that people will say to you: “Well, you’ve let yourselves be led astray by that Waldorf school. It’s a completely amateurish institution; they don’t even want to hear about the greatest achievement of our time: the experimental psychological method.” The approach to this experimental psychological method is professional; what is practiced at the Waldorf School, however, is pure quackery! — You will have to realize that you will sometimes need to recognize the relationship between science—which is by no means to be respected any less—and that which must be built upon an inner pedagogy and didactics, which then, in contrast to the external relationships one learns through experimentation, establishes an inner, loving engagement with the child. Certainly, the latter has by no means completely disappeared; in fact, it prevails more than one might think. But it stands in direct opposition to what is increasingly being pursued as “scientific pedagogy.” In a certain sense, it is also true that while scientific practice today can indeed destroy much, it does not have the power to drive out all common sense. And it is this common sense that we wish to build upon; and if it is nurtured in the right way, it will foster an inner connection to what is to take place in the classroom. We must become aware that we are living at the dawn of a new era and must truly internalize this fact. What had come down from the Greek and Latin-Roman eras persisted, with lingering effects, well into the middle of the 15th century. After the mid-15th century, this was merely a lingering echo. But those who live within this lingering echo still have, in certain deeper layers of their consciousness, a tendency to return again and again to the Greek-Latin era—an era that can indeed be fully admired in its proper context, but whose continuation no longer lives on in our time. Just think for a moment how self-satisfied a person who has learned something becomes today when he can explain to you: Whoever educates properly must not merely focus on the rhythm and rhyme of poems; he must comment on them appropriately, introduce the meaning, and only when one has properly introduced the meaning will one also achieve what a person is meant to internalize as an activity. For such a person will say, after having long expounded on how one should proceed from the meaning—as the ancient Latin scholar said: *Rem tene, verba sequuntur*.... Once you have grasped the matter, the words will follow of their own accord. — This is a tactical approach that you will find today in many people who believe they have learned quite a lot, that they have gone well beyond dilettantism, by first lecturing on something as if it were profound contemporary wisdom and then adding afterward: “Even the ancient Latins said…”—and if they can even say it in Greek, then people are all the more convinced that it is something quite special. It was appropriate to behave this way in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, but it does not fit our age. The Greeks did not first send their children to ancient grammar schools, where they might have learned, say, ancient Egyptian; instead, they had them learn the Greek language. We, however, proceed today by first introducing people to ancient languages. There is something here that must be understood.