The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] If you were to look back at the curricula that were issued relatively recently—six or five decades ago—you would see that these curricula were relatively brief. In just a few short sentences, they specified what was to be covered in each school year for one subject or another. The curricula were no more than 2, 3, or 4 pages long; everything else was left at that time to the pedagogical and didactic instruction itself, which sought to inspire teachers—based on their own assumptions and their own abilities—to determine how to implement the curricula. Today, things have changed. Today, the curriculum for secondary school has already swelled into a book labeled “Official Gazette” on the cover. And this book contains not only a list of what is required, but also all sorts of instructions on how it should be done in school. In other words, over the past few decades, there has been a trend toward allowing pedagogy to be subsumed by state legislation. And perhaps it is the ideal of some legislators to gradually issue everything that was once written in the old works on pedagogy as “Official Gazette publications” or “regulations.” Socialist leaders have, in their subconscious, quite definitely harbored this aspiration—even if they are still too ashamed today to say so openly, it is nonetheless lodged in their subconscious—they have the ideal of enshrining in regulations what, until relatively recently, was free intellectual property, even in the field of pedagogy.

[ 2 ] This must be the reason why we here—who wish to preserve the education and school system from its Leninist downfall, which could also engulf Central Europe—must approach the understanding of the curriculum in a completely different way than the average teacher today approaches the “Official Gazette”—which he already regarded with a serious expression during the era of the monarchy and in the days of ordinary, democratic parliamentarism, but which he will regard with particularly strong feelings of obedience when it is sent to his home by his dictatorial comrades. Whatever may constitute tyranny under socialism would be felt most acutely in the realm of education and instruction. We therefore had to approach the curriculum in an entirely different way. That is to say, we had to approach this curriculum in such a way that we put ourselves in a position to actually shape it for ourselves at any given moment, so that we learn to discern—for the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th grades, and so on—what we are to do during those years. Tomorrow we will compare the ideal curriculum with the curriculum as it is currently in use in the public schools of Central Europe. But we will have thoroughly prepared ourselves for this conclusion only when we have truly internalized, on an emotional level, everything we should have absorbed on the path to understanding the curriculum.

[ 3 ] There is also something else that is extraordinarily important, yet is currently viewed quite incorrectly in official pedagogy. I just concluded the previous class by speaking about the ethics of pedagogy. However, this moral aspect of pedagogy must become teaching practice in didactics; it only becomes teaching practice if one avoids what is frequently presented today in the examples found in books on didactics. There, they speak of illustrative instruction. It is certainly valid, and we have also pointed out how it should be carried out. But we have always had to emphasize that this visual instruction must never become trivial, that it must never exceed what is necessary. Constantly quizzing students on self-evident matters in the name of visual instruction amounts to spreading a atmosphere of boredom over the entire lesson—something that must not be allowed to happen. And it robs the lesson of precisely what I emphasized as so necessary at the end of the previous class: the development of the pupils’ capacity for imagination. If you discuss the shape of any random cooking pot with the pupils—to conduct visual instruction, so to speak—you will undermine their imagination. If you discuss with them the shapes of a Greek vase and allow them to use their perception of those shapes to extend their mental faculties toward understanding even an ordinary, mundane cooking pot, then you will be doing something better than what visual instruction often does today. For this kind of visual instruction is often precisely what kills the imagination. And it is not at all detrimental to the lesson if you make a point of leaving certain things unsaid in class, so that the child is prompted to continue engaging with what they have absorbed in class through their inner faculties. It is not at all good to try to explain everything down to the very last detail in class. Then the child simply leaves school feeling that they have already absorbed everything and goes looking for other distractions. Whereas, if you plant the seeds of imagination in the child, the child remains captivated by what is offered in class and is less likely to seek out other frivolities. The fact that our children today have become such a burden is solely due to the fact that we provide too much superficial, visual instruction and too little instruction in will and feeling.

[ 4 ] But there is another way in which it is necessary to truly grow together with the curriculum on a deep, inner, spiritual level.

[ 5 ] When you receive the child during the first years of elementary school, he or she is a completely different being than in the later years of elementary school. When you receive the child during the first years of elementary school, they are still very, very physical; they are still very much rooted in their body. When you send the child out of school, you must have instilled in them the ability to no longer be rooted in the body with every fiber of their soul, to have become independent of the body in terms of thinking, feeling, and willing. If you try to delve a little more deeply into the nature of the developing human being, you will find that, relatively speaking—especially if the children have not already been spoiled in their very earliest years—pupils still possess healthy instincts during the early school years. In the early school years, they do not yet have a strong tendency to overeat sweets and the like. They still possess certain healthy instincts regarding their diet, just as animals—because they are fully rooted in their bodies—have very good instincts for their nutrition. Precisely because it is rooted in its body, an animal avoids what is harmful to it. At the very least, it is the exception rather than the rule for such evils to spread in the animal world as alcohol has spread in the human world. The spread of such evils as alcohol stems solely from the fact that human beings are such spiritual beings, capable of becoming so independent of their physical nature. For the physical nature, in its rationality, is never predisposed to becoming an alcoholic, for example. Thus, healthy nutritional instincts are still relatively alive in children during their first years of school. These instincts fade away; they fade away in the later school years for the sake of human development. And when sexual maturity approaches, this also means that the person has lost their instincts for nutrition, that they must replace what their instincts once provided with reason. That is why, in a sense, you can still capture the final manifestations of the instincts for nutrition and health during the last years of elementary school in the developing human being. That is precisely when you can still tap into the final manifestations of healthy nutritional instincts, growth instincts, and so on. Later on, you can no longer access the inner sense of proper nutrition and health care. That is why instruction on human nutrition and health care belongs specifically within the final years of elementary school. One should conduct visual instruction specifically in this regard. For this hands-on instruction, in turn, can support the imagination quite well. Present the child with three things—or remind them of them, since they have already seen these things—some substance that is essentially starch or sugar, a substance that is essentially fat, and a substance that is essentially protein. The child is familiar with these. But remind the child that the functioning of the human organism is essentially based on these three components. Building on this, you can then proceed to explain the secrets of nutrition to the child during the final years of elementary school. Then describe respiration to them in detail and explain everything related to human health care in terms of nutrition and respiration. You will gain immensely for your educational work and teaching by providing this instruction precisely during these years. This is when you can still tap into the final instinctive manifestations of the instincts for healing and nutrition. This is why you can teach the child about nutrition and health during these years without making the child selfish for the rest of their life as a result of this instruction. It is still natural for the child to instinctively fulfill their health and nutritional needs. That is why you can speak to them about these matters, and they will respond to this discussion with something that is natural to human beings and does not make them selfish. If children are not taught about nutrition and health during these years, they will have to learn about them later through reading or information from others. Whatever information about nutrition and health reaches a person later, after puberty, through any means, will foster selfishness in them. It cannot help but foster selfishness. When you read a book on nutritional physiology or an outline of rules for health care, you inevitably—simply by the nature of the subject—become more selfish through this reading than you were before. This selfishness, which constantly stems from our intellectual understanding of how to care for ourselves, must be combated precisely through morality. If we did not need to take care of ourselves physically, we would not need morality for our souls. But people are less exposed to the dangers of selfishness later in life if they are taught nutrition and health education during their final years of elementary school, where instruction on nutritional issues and health education does not yet focus on selfishness, but rather on what is natural to human beings.

[ 6 ] You can see just how profoundly vital it is to teach people about certain things at the right moment. You are truly laying the groundwork for their entire lives when you teach them what is right at any given moment. Of course, if one could instill the principles of nutrition and health in seven- or eight-year-old children, that would be the very best. Then they would absorb these principles in the most selfless way, for they are hardly aware yet that they pertain to themselves. They would regard themselves as an object, not as a subject. But they do not yet understand it; their power of judgment is not yet developed enough for them to grasp it. Therefore, you cannot teach nutrition and health education during these years; you must save it for the final years of school, when the fire of their inner instinct for nutrition and health is already beginning to fade, but when, in contrast to this fading instinct, the ability is already present to comprehend what is relevant to them. At every opportunity, it is possible to weave in something related to health and nutrition education for the older children. In natural history, in physics lessons, also in lessons that greatly broaden the scope of geography, and even in history lessons—everywhere, nutrition and health education can be woven in. You will see from this that it is not necessary to include it as a subject in the school curriculum, and that much of it must come alive in the classroom in such a way that we simply let it flow into the lessons. If we have an understanding of what the child is meant to absorb, then every day the child themselves—or the community of children gathered at school—tells us what we need to insert, so to speak, as interludes into the other lessons, and how we, as teachers, must also develop a certain presence of mind. If we are trained as subject teachers of geography or history, then we will not develop this presence of mind, for then our sole aim will be to teach history from the beginning of the history lesson to the end of the history lesson. And this can lead to those extraordinarily unnatural circumstances whose harmful effects on life have not yet been fully taken into account.

[ 7 ] It is a profound truth that we do people a favor—something that helps curb their selfishness—when we teach them about nutrition and health during their final years of elementary school, as I have explained to you.

[ 8 ] But there, too, it is possible to point out many things that infuse the entire lesson with emotional depth. And if you infuse your lesson material with a touch of emotion throughout, then what the lesson is intended to achieve will remain with the student throughout their entire life. But if, in your teaching during the final years of elementary school, you convey only rational, intellectual content, then very little will remain for life. Therefore, you must strive to imbue within yourselves the very things you imaginatively shape in the final years of elementary school with an emotional dimension. You must try to present geography, history, and natural history in the final school years in a vivid way—but a vivid way that is also emotionally engaging. The emotional must accompany the imaginative.

[ 9 ] In fact, in terms of the curriculum, elementary school is clearly divided into the three parts that we have followed: First, up to about the age of 9, when we primarily introduce the budding human being to the conventional—writing and reading; then, up to the age of 12, when we introduce the budding human being to everything that derives both from the conventional and, on the other hand, from what is grounded in the human being’s own power of judgment. And as you have seen, we incorporate zoology and botany into this stage of schooling precisely because the child still possesses a certain instinctive sense of the kinships that exist. In the didactic section, I showed you how to develop a sense of the kinship between human beings and the entire natural world through the examples of the octopus, the mouse, the lamb, and the human being. We have also put a great deal of effort into this—and I hope it will not be in vain, for it will bear blossoms and fruit in botany class—to develop a sense of the human being’s kinship with the plant world. We should develop these things through emotional mental images during this middle phase of elementary school education, when the instincts for such a sense of kinship with animals and plants are still present—when, after all, even if it does not rise to the ordinary clarity of the judging consciousness, a person feels at times like a cat, at times like a wolf, sometimes as a lion, or as an eagle. This feeling of being one thing one moment and another the next is present in this way only until just after the age of nine. Before that, it is more strongly present, but it cannot be fully grasped because the capacity for comprehension is not yet there. If children were very precocious and already spoke a great deal about themselves as early as the fourth or fifth year, comparisons of themselves to the eagle, the mouse, and so on would be very, very common among children. But if we begin teaching natural history at the age of nine, as we have pointed out, we still encounter a great deal of related, instinctive feeling in the child. Later, this instinctive sense also matures into a feeling of kinship with the plant world. Hence, first the natural history of the animal kingdom, then the natural history of the plant kingdom. We leave the minerals for last, precisely because they require almost exclusively the power of judgment, and this does not appeal to anything through which human beings are related to the outside world. After all, human beings are not related to the mineral kingdom. Above all, they must dissolve it, as I have shown you. Human beings do not even tolerate salt in its undissolved form within themselves; as soon as they ingest it, they must dissolve it. It is therefore entirely in human nature to structure the curriculum as we have suggested. There is a beautiful balance in the middle elementary school years, from ages 9 to 11, between the instinctive and the power of judgment. We can generally assume that the child will respond to us with understanding if we rely on a certain instinctive comprehension, provided we do not—especially in natural history and botany—become too concrete. We must avoid drawing external analogies, particularly with regard to the plant world, for this actually runs counter to natural feeling. Natural feeling is already predisposed to seek spiritual qualities in plants—not the external physical form of a human being in this or that tree, but spiritual relationships, such as we have just attempted to identify in the plant kingdom.

[ 10 ] And what is actually judgment—the capacity on which we can rely for a person’s rational, intellectual understanding—belongs to the final years of elementary school. That is why we use the 12th grade in particular—when the development is moving toward judgmental understanding—to allow this to converge with that which still requires a certain instinct, though this instinct is already very strongly overshadowed by the power of judgment. These are, so to speak, the twilight instincts of the soul, which we must overcome with the power of judgment.

[ 11 ] In this context, we must take into account that people have an instinct for earning interest—for what can be reaped, what is at a discount, and so on. This appeals to our instincts; but we must override it very strongly with our powers of judgment, which is why we must already incorporate into this period the relationships that exist between arithmetic, the circulation of commodities, and financial circumstances—that is, percentage calculations, interest calculations, and so on, as well as discount calculations and the like.

[ 12 ] It is of great importance that we do not teach these concepts to the child too late. Teaching these concepts too late actually means relying solely on the child’s selfishness in the process. We are not yet relying on self-interest when, around the age of 12, we teach a person about understanding bills of exchange and the like, about the concepts of commercial accounting, and so on. We can cover actual bookkeeping later; by then, they will have developed more understanding. But teaching these concepts is of great importance at this stage. For the inner, self-interested feelings regarding interest, the issuance of bills of exchange, and the like have not yet arisen when the child is still so young. In business school, this becomes a more serious matter once the person is older.

[ 13 ] These are the kinds of things you, as an educator, must truly internalize. Try not to do too much—let’s say, when describing plants. Try to teach about plants in such a way that plenty is left to the students’ imagination, so that the child can still develop, through their own feelings, a rich and imaginative understanding of the spiritual connections that exist between the human soul and the plant world. Anyone who raves too much about visual instruction simply does not realize that there are things to be taught to people that cannot be perceived externally. And if one tries to use visual instruction to teach people things that should actually be taught through moral and emotional influence, one actually harms them through that very visual instruction. One must not forget that mere observation and illustration are very much a byproduct of our materialistic mindset. Of course, one must cultivate observation where it is appropriate, but one must not transform into an observational exercise that which is suited to allowing a moral and heartfelt influence to flow from the teacher to the student.

[ 14 ] I think you've taken in enough now that we can really start putting together our curriculum.

This concludes Rudolf Steiner’s remarks on September 5, 1919.

The following day, in his three lectures on the curriculum, he provided a brief outline of the instructional goals for the individual subjects at the various age levels and in the individual grades; he pointed out the subjects that could be linked together in their treatment.

At the conclusion of this two-week workshop with the teachers, Rudolf Steiner spoke the following words: