The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] I have already said that, with regard to both religious instruction and the curriculum itself, we must of course make compromises, since external legal requirements for schools already exist today. But we must still understand the sound foundations of the curriculum so that we can personally make corrections here and there where the curriculum imposes something inorganic on us—correct it, so to speak, behind the scenes.

[ 2 ] Finding the right curriculum for the period between the ages of 7 and 14 or 15 generally depends on a true understanding of the child’s development during this time. Yesterday we highlighted a specific stage of development—the period between the ages of 9 and 10, that is, the time when the child has just turned 9 and is entering the 10th year of life. So if we trace the child’s development from age 7 through age 8 and into age 9, then before the 10th year is reached, we find somewhere within that span the point I characterized for you in the developmental process by saying: “This is when the ‘I’ consciousness is strengthened and condensed, so that from this time onward we can approach the child using concepts from natural history, in the way I described yesterday with the example of the octopus and the mouse, or the lamb, or the horse, and the human being.” But you will have seen that in doing so, we must still take into account the interrelationship between the human being and its environment—the fact that the human being is, in essence, the synthesis of all the other kingdoms of nature, and that it should not yet be sharply separated from the other kingdoms of nature. One does immense harm to the developing human being if one does not proceed in such a way that, in the 10th and 11th years, one repeatedly points out to the child—through feelings and sensations—how the human being is connected to the external natural world, and how the human being is a synthesis of the external natural world.

[ 3 ] But then there is another important stage in a child’s development, which occurs between the ages of 12 and 13. During this time, the human being’s spiritual-soul aspect becomes stronger and more vigorous, insofar as this spiritual-soul aspect is less dependent on the ego. What we are accustomed to calling the astral body in Spiritual Science permeates and unites with the etheric body. The astral body is not truly born as an independent entity until sexual maturity, but it manifests in a distinctive way through the etheric body by permeating and infusing it during the period between the ages of 12 and 13. Here, then, lies another important point in development. It manifests itself in such a way that, if we properly address what lies within the human being, the person begins to develop an understanding of the impulses at work in the external world that are similar to the spiritual-soul impulses—such as those that operate in the external world as historical forces. I have illustrated the workings of such historical forces for you using a sample example, showing how they can be applied in elementary school instruction. But although you must translate what I have explained to you into language suitable for children, no matter how childlike your speech might be, you would still not be able to awaken the proper understanding of historical impulses in the child if you were to approach the child with historical analysis before the age of 12 is complete. You can tell children history beforehand in the form of stories; you can tell them biographies. They will grasp that. But they will not grasp historical contexts before they have reached the age of 12. Therefore, you will cause harm if you do not observe this timing. At this point, a person begins to develop a longing to have what they previously absorbed as stories now truly presented to them as history. And if you have previously told the child stories, for example, about this or that crusader or about others, you must now try to reshape these stories so that the child perceives the historical impulses and historical contexts within this reshaped form. When you observe this and clearly notice that, starting at age 12—if you do it correctly—the child responds with understanding, you will say to yourself: “So until the age of 9, I will mainly limit myself to what we have already referred to as the artistic realm, and from that develop reading and writing, and later move on to arithmetic as well; but I will not move on to natural history until after the point in time characterized yesterday, and I will not move on to history—insofar as it is not merely stories—until the child has reached the age of 12.” That is when the child begins to take an inner interest in the great historical contexts. This will be particularly important for the future, for it will become increasingly necessary to educate people to grasp historical contexts, whereas until now they have not even developed a true understanding of history. For they were more like cogs in the machinery of economic and political life; they were integrated into that machinery and met the demands and interests of economic and political life even if they had only a rudimentary knowledge of stories about rulers and wars — which, of course, is not history — and if they knew the dates when the rulers and, at most, a few famous figures lived, and when the wars took place.

[ 4 ] How human culture has developed will have to be a particular focus of instruction in the future. But then, instruction will have to incorporate historical impulses, and these historical impulses will have to be properly integrated into the curriculum at the appropriate time.

[ 5 ] However, once a person has crossed this Rubicon after reaching the age of 12, something else begins to become clear to them. You can explain the structure of the human eye to the child as clearly as possible beforehand—but the child will not be able to truly understand the structure of the human eye in the right way before reaching this point. For what does it actually mean to teach a child about the structure of the human eye? It means drawing the child’s attention to how rays of light approach the eye, enter the eye, how these rays are received and refracted by the lens, how they then pass through the vitreous humor, how they form an image on the back wall of the eye, and so on. You must describe all of this as physical processes. You are describing a physical process that actually takes place within the human being itself—namely, within the human sensory organ. If you want to describe this, you must first have developed the concepts in the child that enable it to comprehend a description of the eye in this sense. This means you must first have taught the child what the refraction of light rays is. This can be explained to the child very simply by showing them a lens, telling them what the focal point is, and demonstrating how the rays are refracted. However, in doing so, you are merely describing physical facts that occur outside the human being. This can be done during the period between the age of 9 and just before the age of 12. One should not apply this physical description to organs within the human being until after the child has turned 12, because only then does the child begin to properly assess how the external world affects the human being and how the activity of the external world continues within the human being. Before the age of 12, a child cannot yet understand this. A child can understand physical processes—but not how physical processes take place within the human being.

[ 6 ] There is a certain kinship between the conception of historical impulses within humanity and the conception of external physical natural impulses within the human organism. What is truly human lives within these historical impulses, but what is encompassed by these impulses exists as an external historical process and in turn affects human beings. When you describe the human eye, the same forces that act externally in nature also act within the human being. Both processes must be met with a similar kind of understanding, and this understanding actually begins only at the age of 12. Therefore, it will be necessary to structure the curriculum so that the physical concepts suitable for understanding the human being itself are taught to the child between the ages of 9 and 12 —that is, to teach simple physics alongside natural history—but to wait until the age of 12 to apply the laws of physics to human beings themselves—just as one should continue telling stories until the age of 12, in order to then turn those stories into “history.”

[ 7 ] What I have discussed here applies to the beginning of the subject. Of course, the further development of physics instruction can then continue into the period after the age of 12. But one should not begin physics instruction or natural history instruction before the age of 9, nor should history instruction or instruction of a physiological nature—that is, the description of human activities—begin before the age of 12. If you consider that understanding is something that is not confined solely to the human intellect but always encompasses feeling and will as well, then you will not be entirely at odds with what I have just said. And if people fail to take such things into account, it is because they are indulging in illusions. One can, to a limited extent, teach historical or physiological concepts to a child’s intellect before the age of 12, but in doing so one corrupts human nature; one essentially renders it unsuitable for life as a whole. In this way, you will be able, for example, to gradually discuss concepts such as the refraction of light and the formation of images through lenses or other instruments between the ages of 9 and 12. You will, for instance, be able to discuss how opera glasses work with a child between the ages of 9 and 12. During this time, you will also be able to discuss with the child the nature and functioning of a clock, explain the difference between a pendulum clock and a pocket watch, and cover similar topics. However, you should not explain to the child before the age of 12 how the principles of refraction and image formation apply to the human eye.

[ 8 ] This has now provided you with insights that can guide you on how to structure the curriculum and distribute the course material so that you can develop the child’s abilities in the proper way. There is another aspect to consider from this perspective. It is of some importance that we do not stray too far from real life in our teaching, but also that we do not give it undue attention in a trivial way. For example, asking a child, “What do you have on your feet?”—to which the child replies, “A pair of boots”—and then asking, “What are the boots for?” “So I can put them on”—some teachers call this ‘object-oriented instruction,’ and they really do bring trivialities to light in such lessons. If one conducts object-oriented instruction as it is sometimes prescribed in teaching manuals, one bores the child terribly on a subconscious level, and in doing so, one once again does a great deal of harm to the child. One should not concern oneself with this practice of staying too close to everyday life and constantly bringing concepts into consciousness—concepts that could actually rest quite well in the unconscious, but which merely bring habitual activities too strongly into consciousness. But that does not mean, however, that one should completely distance oneself from life and teach the child empty abstractions too early. This will be of particular importance for physics instruction. Indeed, physics instruction will, in any case, provide an opportunity to bring together what is close to life and what is initially distant from life—from external life—very closely. You should therefore bear in mind that you develop physical concepts through life. As best as you can, using your own ingenuity, you should help the children observe things like this: how, for example, it is sometimes still cold underfoot in our room after we’ve turned on the heat, while it has already become warm up near the ceiling. In this way, you draw the child’s attention to a fact of life, and you can build on this fact to explain that, of course, the air around the stove at the bottom warms up first. It doesn’t get warm at the top of the room first. But warm air tends to rise, and then the cold air must fall, so the process must be explained to the child as follows: The air around the stove at the bottom warms up first; this warm air rises, so that the cold air must then fall, and that is why our feet are still cold in a room even when the air up top has been warm for a long time. In this way, you’ve started from a fact of everyday life and can now make the transition to the principle that warm air expands and cold air contracts. At that point, you’re already moving away from everyday life. But in other cases as well—for example, when you discuss the lever in physics—it is not good to simply introduce the abstract concept of a lever; start with the balance beam, and use that to arrive at the principle of the lever. So start with what applies in real life, and then move on to what can be derived from that for physics.

[ 9 ] However, I cannot fail to mention that some of the concepts already introduced into our understanding of physics can actually cause harm to children, and that a great deal depends on the teacher himself knowing the correct information—on him striving, in general, to possess a certain level of maturity in his judgment. You are compelled to tell relatively older children: “Here you have an electrifying machine; what I am demonstrating to you here is called a friction electrifying machine. By rubbing certain objects, I can generate electricity, but I must always carefully wipe down the objects that are to become electrified beforehand, because they must be dry.” If they’re wet, the experiment won’t work—no electricity will be generated. — You then explain to the children the reasons why it’s not possible to generate electricity with wet instruments. Then you move on to explaining how lightning is produced, which you describe as an electrical process as well. Now many people say: The clouds rub against each other, and the friction between the clouds then produces lightning as an electrical discharge. — The child might believe this because the teacher himself believes it, but something very special is going on in the child’s subconscious, of which the child is naturally unaware. The child thinks to himself: “Yes, the teacher always carefully wipes down the instruments that are supposed to rub against each other and generate electricity beforehand, so they aren’t wet, but afterward he tells me that electricity is supposed to be generated by the rubbing clouds, which are also wet!” The child notices these inconsistencies. And much of the inner conflict in life stems from the fact that the child is told such contradictions. Contradictions should arise out there in the world—they have no place in our thinking! But because people’s knowledge and understanding today are not profound enough, such contradictions—which actually tear apart the unconscious inner being of a person—persist in what we teach children or, later on, young people. That is why we must at least ensure that what we consciously present to the child does not contain too much of the mental image the child then forms in the subconscious. In science, we as teachers are not immediately called upon to eradicate such things as the foolish connection introduced in physics between lightning and electricity. But when we deal with—I would say—more transparent subjects, we should always be mindful that we are not merely influencing the child’s conscious mind, but always also their subconscious. How can we take this subconscious into account?

[ 10 ] We can only do this by becoming, as teachers, more and more human beings who do not merely prepare the child’s understanding. From another perspective, I have already explained what is involved here. You should develop within yourselves the abilities that, the moment you engage with a child in any area of instruction, allow you to be as absorbed in that subject matter as the child is absorbed in the lesson—no matter what you are teaching. You should not let yourselves be dominated by the thought: “I already know so much else, and I’ll adapt this to suit the child; I’ll position myself above the child and tailor everything I want to say to the child to suit them.”—No! You must have the ability to transform yourself in such a way that the child is literally awakened by your teaching, that you yourself become a child alongside the child. But not in a childish way. Governesses often do it this way; they babble with the child; they say “Tata” instead of “Father” when the child says “Tata.” What matters is not that you become childish in outward appearance, but that you translate what is more mature into the child’s language. To do this properly, however, one must look a little deeper into human nature. One must take seriously the fact that a person becomes productive—precisely with regard to the most important spiritual quality—by preserving the childlike within oneself for one’s entire life. One is a poet, an artist, when one can always allow the activity of the child to be enlivened within the mature person. To always be a serious person, no longer able to act childlike—in one’s thinking, feeling, and willing, which have now, in one’s thirties, taken on more mature concepts—to be nothing but a serious person: that is not the appropriate attitude toward life for a teacher. Rather, the right attitude toward life for him is this: to be able to return to childhood through everything he himself experiences and learns. Of course, he will not return to childhood in such a way—when he is alone—that, for example, when he learns a new fact, he describes it to himself in babbling words. But he will be able to return in such a way that he rejoices in this new fact—rejoices so intensely—just as a child rejoices in the perception of a new fact of life. In short, it is the soul-spiritual that should return to childhood, not the outwardly physical.

[ 11 ] Of course, a great deal will depend on the atmosphere that develops between the teacher and the students. For example, if you talk about life or nature in a way that shows you take as much delight in them as the child does, and that you are as amazed by them as the child is, then that is the right atmosphere. Here’s an example: You’ve all learned a bit about physics, so you understand the so-called Morse telegraph quite well. You know how things work when a telegram is transmitted from one place to another. You know that through the various devices—specifically, the button that the telegraph operator presses—pressing it once briefly or once for a longer time—the current is either closed for a short or longer period, while it is interrupted when the button is not pressed. You know that the actual Morse telegraph apparatus is then connected to the current, where an iron bar is attracted by a coil containing an electromagnet. You know that a so-called relay is also connected to this current. You know that this establishes a connection via a wire between a telegraph apparatus at one station and one at another, so that what is transmitted at the first station is reproduced at the second station. When I switch on the current for a short or long time, something is received at the other station; through this transmission, a signal is generated that the telegraph operator at the other station then reads. Whether the interruption is short or long is visible as a mark on a strip of paper, so that a short duration of the current produces a dot on the paper, while a long duration produces a dash. The strip of paper runs through rollers. So, for example, you might see a dot, then perhaps three dots after an interruption, and so on. The alphabet is thus composed of dots and dashes; an “a” is :-, a “b” is --*, a single dash is a “t,” and so on. In this way, one can decipher what is being transmitted from one station to another.

[ 12 ] But everything that is said about this telegraph apparatus is really just a subject for intellectual contemplation. It truly does not require much emotional investment to make sense of all the mechanical processes taking place there, as the mechanism is driven by the effects of electricity—about which, after all, only hypotheses exist in science today. But one thing remains a miracle, and one can certainly describe these things as miracles. And I must say: When I think of the connection that is established between the Morse telegraph at one station and that at another, I am always struck anew by the sheer wonder of it when I consider how the circuit is closed. It is not closed by a wire running from the first station to the second and a second wire running back from there. One could do that, too; in that case, the interruption would be created by breaking the closed circuit. However, such a closed circuit—in which the Morse telegraph is then activated—is not created by wires running back and forth; rather, only one part of the current is actually conducted through the wire. Then, at one station, the wire goes into the ground and connects to a metal plate there, and at the other station, the wire likewise goes into the ground and connects to a metal plate. And the connection that could be established here by the wire is actually established by the earth itself. What would otherwise be accomplished by the other half of the wire in a closed circuit takes place through the earth itself. And every time one thinks about how a telegraph apparatus at one station is connected to one at another, one must think of a miracle: that the earth—the entire earth—acts as a mediator, that it, as it were, takes the current under its wing and faithfully passes it on to the other station, since it alone takes on this mediating role. All explanations given on this subject are merely hypotheses. What is important, however, for our human experience is that we can perceive this as a wondrous fact time and time again, and that we do not become desensitized even to the emotional impact of physical processes. Then, when we explain this to a child, we will find the right mood to return again and again to the way we first took in a concept when we first understood it. Then, when explaining a physical phenomenon to a child who is filled with wonder, we ourselves become a child filled with wonder. And such things are found in everything, even in the physical processes of the world.

[ 13 ] Imagine you are teaching a child the following: There is something like a bench; on this bench lies a ball; I quickly pull the bench away—the ball falls down. What will today’s teacher usually say when explaining such a phenomenon to a child? He will say: The ball is attracted by the Earth; if it is not supported, it is subject to gravity. —But that actually says nothing. For this statement—“The ball is subject to gravity”—actually has no substance at all; it is one of those verbal explanations we have already discussed. For even physicists say of gravity and its nature: “We know nothing about it”—yet they still speak of it. But we cannot help but speak of gravity. We have to talk about it. Otherwise, the student goes out into the world, and here and there, when he or she needs to prove their competence in some situation, they’ll be asked: “What is gravity?” And just imagine what would happen if a fifteen-year-old rascal—boy or girl—didn’t know what gravity is! All hell would break loose. So we really must tell the child what gravity is; we must not foolishly shut ourselves off from what the world demands today. But by working on the subconscious, we can awaken beautiful concepts in the child. Because we have taught them other things, we can, for example, make it clear to them: If you have the reservoir of an air pump here, with no air inside, and if you now remove the plug, the air flows in quickly, filling what is empty there. Thus, there is a universal need for something to flow into what is empty. This is related to what happens in the other case, where we speak of the effect of gravity; if you pull the peg out from the bottom, something flows in as well. The only difference is that in one case the outside air flows into the empty space, while in the other case the effect occurs in only one direction. Now compare one phenomenon with the other. Do not give the child definitions of words, but rather explain the relationships between the concepts and the phenomena related to air, and those phenomena that occur with solid bodies. And if the concept were once grasped of solid bodies flowing in the direction in which they would move if unsupported, then this concept would be distinguished from the inflow of air into empty space; then healthier concepts would emerge than those being poured into the world today, such as through Professor Einstein’s convoluted theory of relativity. I say this only as a side note to the current state of culture, but I must point out to you that many unfortunate elements thrive in our culture—for example, in the theory of relativity, especially in its latest form—and how these things then run rampant once the child has become a researcher.

[ 14 ] This has already given you a good idea of what the curriculum entails and what materials should be used to develop it.