The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Pedagogical-Didactic Art and the Waldorf School

[ 1 ] First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt joy to all of you who have come here as the teaching staff from our immediate neighborhood, and I am convinced that those who are actively involved with our Goetheanum and all that is connected with it will fully agree with me as I warmly welcome you today on behalf of this Goetheanum and its staff, and express to you how delighted we are to have you here as our guests.

[ 2 ] It has been requested that, before our eurythmy performance, I discuss some of the specific ways in which our endeavors in Spiritual Science have led to developments in the art of education and the school system—and, in some cases, have already resulted in practical applications. But first, let me make a more general remark.

[ 3 ] You see, what is meant to emerge—both in an educational context and from a didactic perspective—from our anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science still has, in essence, very few truly understanding advocates in the world today; it has all the more uncomprehending opponents and just as many people who, emerging from humanity’s current general state of spiritual slumber, remain indifferent to such endeavors. But precisely in the very recent past, events have taken place that may at least be regarded here as—I would say—signs, signs of how, on the one hand, so to speak through solitary individuals from across the entire spectrum of our civilized life, a perspective is being opened up precisely toward what is to come about from this Goetheanum building in Dornach. I must indeed describe it as an important, if only symptomatic, fact that the old Professor Spitta in Tübingen—who is, after all, so well known to us and who has recently concluded his teaching career—delivered his final lecture in such a way that it culminated in a discussion of the most eminent truth in the Spiritual Science: the truth of repeated earthly lives. But it is not so much the fact that this university professor, at the solemn moment of concluding his academic career, once again affirmed what he had in fact advocated his entire life—that does not even seem to me to be as significant as the other fact, namely, that he said precisely in this lecture: Gentlemen, just imagine what it would mean for human understanding and, above all, for human action in the future if this view were to gain wider acceptance. — It is a significant hallmark of a man who has grown old in the world of contemporary science and philosophy when he concludes his teaching career with such a declaration! For one can well form a mental image of the terrible events of our time making a profound impression on precisely such a personality, and that it is precisely such a personality who, from the solitude of his thoughts, feels the need to say what could lift up humanity—which is now in decline—from the spirit and the soul, and what could in turn lead to a new beginning.

[ 4 ] You see, this is, on the one hand, what I would like to say: wherever there are perceptive, feeling souls, the insights that we seek to present here in a scientific context arise, at least as intuitions; and it is expected that these insights, by flowing into all aspects of civilized life in our time, will be able to counteract decline with a new rise.

[ 5 ] But indeed, these are flashes of light that arise in individual places. Anyone who observes them will perceive them as rare flashes of light, but will recognize in them how, especially among the best of our time, there is a striving for a renewal of spiritual life springing from very, very deep sources of the soul. This, however, is countered by what—I do not hesitate to say—arises today not only from a certain lethargy but, to put it mildly, from an immense superficiality of our time; a superficiality that, especially in circles active in public journalism, often leads to outright frivolity when it comes to the great questions of existence and human life. And now that I have first shown you a flash of light, I would also like to show you, so to speak, some of the shadows—which, however, do not occur in isolated instances but are far, far more widespread. I could cite hundreds of facts to support this last assertion; but for now I will present just one particularly characteristic example.

[ 6 ] One of our English friends has been working in London to generate interest in what is to take place here in Dornach. He attempted to have a short, entirely truthful and objective article published in what appears to be a reputable magazine—there are, after all, many such magazines and newspapers at present. The journalist who listened to the matter—the one whom the gentleman in question visited—that is, the London journalist—was very friendly and exceptionally accommodating. He promised to advocate for the cause in such a way that a visit from about as many people as are here today, bringing us joy from your side, would be arranged from London. The journalist in question then remarked on just how transformative the information he had been given was. I would like to read you something from this account as evidence of the frivolity with which people today speak of things they do not know—for the journalist, of course, had no idea what is happening here in Dornach. This kind of thing shows how little people today are inclined to even consider it when a source somewhere seeks to assert something that honestly believes it can counter decline with a new beginning. So, as a result of this conversation—conducted in a favorable spirit by the journalist—the following appeared in a London magazine:

Remarks and Comments

[ 7 ] A College of Spiritual Science

[ 8 ] A School of Spiritual Science has been established under the name “Goetheanum” in Dornach near Basel, Switzerland. The building itself exemplifies a new artistic concept initiated by Dr. Rudolf Steiner. A trip to Basel is planned to visit it, and Dr. Steiner has promised to personally instruct the participants during the ten-day visit, which is scheduled to take place in August. Assuming the trip takes four days, participants will have the remaining six days to recover from the shock caused by their first glimpse of Dr. Steiner’s creation. Assuming that no one who is able to make the trip would want to miss what we expect to be an interesting experience, we are providing an illustration of what awaits the participants at the end of their pilgrimage; and if any of our readers happen to make the trip, we hope they will do us the favor of sharing their impressions with us upon their return.” [“The Architect,” No. 34, London, July 16, 1920]

[ 9 ] So you see, this is how people treat what they don't know. That is the mood of the world today; those are the difficulties we have to contend with today.

[ 10 ] Well, my dear friends here today, Spiritual Science is meant for many people, and it is intended—as our fall course, which is scheduled to begin on September 26, will demonstrate above all—to exert a stimulating influence on all possible branches of spiritual life. In the spring, a smaller course held here already demonstrated how the field of medicine and therapy in particular can be enriched by Spiritual Science. And so it is for the most diverse fields. The external design of the building itself is meant to bear witness to what is being attempted artistically with regard to what can take root in our sensibilities through Spiritual Science. But today I would like to speak to you about what Spiritual Science can bring about in terms of pedagogy and didactics. I am not speaking here of some mere program that we would not value, nor merely of theoretical pedagogical discussions, but of something that has, after all, already been put into practice during a school year at our “Free Waldorf School” in Stuttgart. This Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart is the creation of Emil Molt. Its initial mission was to bring to life, in a practical way, what can emerge from a development of what, in our Spiritual Science, lies above all as a true understanding of the human being—and thus also of the child.

[ 11 ] You see, I place particular importance on the fact that we already have a year of actual school practice behind us. I place particular importance on this because this entire Spiritual Science—as it is to be brought into the world from here at the Goetheanum in Dornach—would, in essence, be nothing more than just another sectarian movement or some kind of worldview theory or the like—there are already plenty of such beautiful things in the world—if it weren’t for something else; if this Spiritual Science, in contrast to everything of this kind that enters the world, did not aim for something entirely different. This Spiritual Science does not seek to produce ideas for a new worldview; this Spiritual Science does not seek to be just any theory or even a new religious creed, as is slanderously claimed of it—the latter least of all. What it aims to be was, in fact, originally conceived not with reference to any religious creed at all, but rather in accordance with the scientific mode of thinking and the mindset of our time. It has been conceived as that which can be brought forth by human beings as knowledge for the spirit and the soul, just as the natural sciences—so fruitful for our time—have been brought forth as knowledge for physical life. And this Spiritual Science is based on the fact that, if one applies the correct methods—which I have described in my books *An Outline of Esoteric Science* and *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*— one is able to gain insights into the soul and spirit that are just as certain and just as well-defined and clearly delineated as those gained through contemporary scientific methods for the physical world.

[ 12 ] However, what must be done to arrive at insights in Spiritual Science in a truly methodical way is neither more convenient nor easier than what must be done, for example, in a chemistry lab, a physics lab, an observatory, or a hospital. Simply because people have a mental image of anthroposophical researchers as the kind of people who let all sorts of ideas come to them—ideas that can be had quickly, drawn swiftly from the imagination—simply because people have this mental image, they misunderstand the paths that are to be taken from anthroposophy into the spiritual world. If one familiarizes oneself with the entire process by which a person, through the self-education of their entire being, can come to open up within themselves perspectives into the spiritual world that are then just as precise and certain as the findings of the natural sciences; only when one learns how long it takes to conduct research into relatively small, insignificant truths that are added to external, physical knowledge—let us say, for example, in the field of human sensory perception, human anatomy, or the like; only when one realizes how decades of research are often necessary for the most minute details in the field of Spiritual Science—only then will one come to understand that research in this field is by no means more comfortable or easier than research in a clinical setting, at an observatory, or in a physics or chemistry laboratory. But even today, there is still a lack of willingness to accept that such research into the mind and soul can exist.

[ 13 ] The aspirations that have emerged in the field of scientific knowledge over the past three to four centuries—and especially in the 19th century—have been grand and formidable. And I need not mention to you what this scientific knowledge has brought to the world. But I would like to mention one thing: that whoever stands firmly on the ground of our anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science will be the very last person to criticize anything legitimate in scientific research in any disparaging way. For this is the first and foremost point: that the only person who can stand firm in the realm of our Spiritual Science is one who does not approach contemporary scientific practice in a dilettantish or even layman-like manner. Only when one has [acquired] scientific rigor and strictly scientific research methods in the laboratory, at the observatory, and so on—when one has trained oneself in the precision of research that is sought there—only then has one awakened within oneself the inner worldview necessary to become a researcher of the spirit. In the outer world, one is always confronted, as they say, with the harsh reality that corrects one. If I am a poor bridge builder in theory and calculate a bridge incorrectly, then the plummeting train teaches me that I have built my bridge poorly. And so correction is ever-present when one seeks to apply the laws perceived by the spirit to the outer physical reality. However, the further we ascend from the lower foundations of physical reality and approach the actual study of the spirit and the soul, the more precarious this exploration becomes in relation to reality. And if you were just as strict in your judgment of the physician who must restore health that has been destroyed as you are in observing how nature corrects the incompetent mechanic through the crashing train, then—according to today’s understanding—you would not be able to proceed in that manner. For as a mechanic, you can be tested by nature. Whether someone has died in spite of—or even because of—medicine—that’s where things get a bit shakier! And once you ascend into the spiritual and psychological realms, you must bring with you inner conscientiousness and, above all, the most serious and rigorous sense of truth if you wish to conduct supersensory research, for there it is easy to mistake fantasy for reality.

[ 14 ] But something quite special happens when one acquires the method for spiritual research in this way, through inner spiritual education and discipline. What happens, in fact, is that one comes closer to the things of the world than one would as an external natural scientist. For you see, this is precisely what is so peculiar about modern natural science, which tends to focus more on the material: on the one hand, it positions itself in front of the factual world of the external senses; but on the other hand, by deriving ideas—which it posits as natural laws—from this external sensory world, it drifts more and more toward intellectualism, toward theory, and toward a detachment from reality, so that contemporary researchers of worldviews no longer know how to actually connect the ideas they devise to reality. They often investigate whether the ideas that human beings carry in their souls have anything to do with external reality at all. This is the tragedy of the modern, scientifically oriented worldview: people may profess adherence to this worldview; they want to engage with reality—with mere external reality—yet they become detached from this external reality precisely through their ideas. They no longer have the living connection—the connection of the whole human being to living reality. They want to tackle reality and grow out of it. This leads to abstract, intellectualized contents of the soul. And so it comes to pass that the more a person grows into materialism, the more they grow out of reality.

[ 15 ] When one sets out on the path of spiritual research, one immediately has this inner experience: You immerse yourself in reality; you do not merely stand there and look at your object, but immerse yourself in this reality with your entire soul life; you become one with reality. That is why Spiritual Science can never exist without one beginning to love what one seeks to know—and loving it more and more. Spiritual Science is at the same time something that, when it takes hold in our soul, permeates us with love for the world; something that cannot exist—even though it strives for mathematical clarity in the conception and formation of ideas—without seizing the whole human being, including feeling and willing. That is why I may say: The practical testing of what follows from Spiritual Science in terms of pedagogy and didactics is actually what can be of value to us in the first place. For to speak about anything—no matter how beautiful the theories behind it—while remaining alien to the very subject one is discussing: that is, in essence, easy, and is today the task that numerous worldviews and founders of creeds set for themselves. What is intended here has absolutely nothing to do with that. Rather, it is precisely this immersion in reality—and especially in human reality—that arises quite naturally as a consequence of the Spiritual Science, through the very nature and essence of the Spiritual Science.

[ 16 ] And so it is that, above all else, what emerges through the Spiritual Science is a deeper understanding of human nature itself. Such an understanding of human nature that the one who now stands before the developing human being, the child—before this wondrous mystery of the world that is being born, which in the first days of its external existence in the world reveals to us at every moment the marvelous structure of a physical organism emerging from the spiritual-soul realm, and which then, as it grows, how everything is shaped from within, out of the spiritual-soul realm—that the person who now stands before this living mystery of the world, this human being in the making, as a teacher or educator, grows together with their task in such a way that one must truly say: Spiritual Science is then the fire through which love for education and teaching is directly awakened. That is the goal of all our efforts here: to get to know the human being.

[ 17 ] But one cannot come to know a person without coming to know them as a being in the process of becoming. And once one truly sets out to come to know a person as a being in the process of becoming, then one must even enrich our language with a new word. For those who look a little deeper into the reality of life, all the languages of European civilization have only one word for the fundamental fact of life, and there ought to be two! They have one word. Now, if we go back to primeval times, to those eras of human life of which only ancient documents speak in mythical terms, then we find something similar to what we need once again: when we speak of the eternal, the indestructible aspect of the human being in contrast to the destructible, transitory body, we need—in addition to our word “immortality,” which points to the physical end of life—another word; we need the word “unbornness.” For just as we pass through the gate of death with our eternal, spiritual part and continue to live another life in the spiritual world—one that is comprehensible to spiritual research—so too do we descend from spiritual worlds to this physical embodiment on Earth before we are born or conceived here. We do not merely pass through the gate of death as immortals—we enter through the gate of birth as the unborn. We need the term “unbornness” alongside the term “immortality” if we are to fully comprehend the human being in its essence.

[ 18 ] What I am hinting at here is elaborated upon in all its aspects in my writings. I can only present you with, so to speak, the main points, because my aim is to illustrate what becomes of human life and human feeling when we seek to put such a view into practice.

[ 19 ] Imagine the teacher who—like our Waldorf teachers in Stuttgart—has gone through what one can go through when one allows Spiritual Science to work upon one’s soul. Imagine him: He stands before the developing human being, before the child. He has not merely a dry theory, but a living purpose within him—he tells himself: Souls have descended from the spiritual worlds—these very souls with which I must now work. - And now, through the pedagogy and didactics that flow from Spiritual Science, he is given insight into how these souls can be guided from year to year, from month to month. And since you are all educators of young people, I may perhaps, based on a small detail—which for me, however, is the result of more than three decades of research—to develop an idea that, if it does not remain merely an idea or a thought, but becomes living action in the educator and teacher, will evoke a remarkably inspiring relationship between the teacher and the student, between the educator and the child being educated. You see, in psychology today there is much talk about the relationship between the physical and the spiritual. And there are theories that describe how the soul and the body are supposed to interact. But these things are not studied. We lack the method of Spiritual Science through which these things can be studied. For they must be studied in detail. One cannot speak of a relationship between the human soul and the body by merely rambling on in such general terms; rather, one must know all the details. For details of the soul affect details of the human body. I merely wish to hint at which of the individual ideas at the heart of this matter I actually have in mind.

[ 20 ] First, we observe the child before he or she starts school. We know that at first the child has what are called baby teeth. Then, from the age of six to eight, the permanent teeth begin to emerge. For those who do not merely observe the outer human being but, through Spiritual Science, observe the whole human being, this is an extraordinarily important phase of life. It is no coincidence that it coincides with the phase in which the child enters elementary school. For what finally emerges as teeth stems from forces that are present in the whole human being and are active throughout the whole human being; and this is, so to speak, the culmination; when these second teeth appear, a culmination is reached with something that has been active in the human organism up to that point. That which was active there continued until the emergence of the teeth.

[ 21 ] Now, anyone who observes human life more closely will find that, starting at a certain stage of human life, memory—and especially the ability to combine ideas and the power of imagination—attains a very specific structure. What later becomes intellectual life begins to manifest itself particularly clearly from this stage of life onward. And if one now traces what takes place in the child’s soul-spiritual life up to the point when the permanent teeth begin to erupt—if one traces this in a strictly scientific manner, just as one would examine a natural object under a microscope—one might ask: What happens to the soul once the teeth have come in? —Then one discovers that it is the same force that first flooded and permeated the organism and that then emancipates itself from the organism and, freely within the soul, becomes intellectual capacity.

[ 22 ] They observe the child from the ages of seven to nine, focusing on the child’s psychological and intellectual life, and say to themselves: What now emerges as intellect was previously at work within the organism while it was still in the subconscious. It was active in the body as a psychological force.

[ 23 ] I will now summarize for you something that, as I said, is the result of more than three decades of research. In it, you have established in a very concrete and detailed manner how the soul—which, admittedly, does not yet appear in its primordial form, its natural form, during the first seven years—works on the body. — This is true of our Spiritual Science in every respect. Based on rigorous research principles, it discusses the relationship between soul and body—not with philosophical rambling, but based on concrete findings regarding how individual aspects of the soul, in this case the intellect, initially act upon the body. We trace how the intellect works within the body and gradually organizes it until the teeth have erupted.

[ 24 ] And so one can continue this process further and further, arriving at an understanding of the entire human body from the spiritual-soul perspective. Here, no theories are put forward about the interaction between soul and body. Here, one does not merely observe the human being as he or she exists in a specific period of time, but rather traces the entire human being. One cannot ask: How do soul and body interact from birth until the teeth begin to fall out? For what has been at work there only becomes outwardly apparent from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life. Then a new epoch begins. And so, step by step, Spiritual Science is used to study what this human being actually is. This does not result in that abstract, that “gray” theory of the human being that one is accustomed to finding today in standard textbooks and manuals; rather, it yields something that fills us with insight in the same way that we are filled, in an individual, personal relationship, by something that confronts us in life and interests us directly out of life itself.

[ 25 ] This opens our eyes to the developing human being, the child: how the child’s soul takes shape more and more within the physical body. And this inspires the will to approach this developing child in a pedagogically sound manner. Then one gains the ability to discern how the developing child actually relates to what is to be offered to him.

[ 26 ] You see, we teach our children to read and write. If we set aside certain primordial times in human history, when reading and writing were still very close to human experience—I need only recall the ancient pictographic scripts—and look at our own times, the times of our civilization—and we must, after all, for this is the world in which we live and in which we must raise our children— well, what are our written characters, what are our letters, if not something very far removed from the child’s original, elementary experience! When a child is to learn to read and write, it is actually introduced into a world that is entirely foreign to it. This is not the case with arithmetic, for that lies more within human nature. Counting is something much closer to the original, elemental nature of the human soul than reading and writing specifically. Writing has evolved, and pictures have become symbols through which one enters, as it were, a foreign world.

[ 27 ] Based on fundamental insights into human nature, we have adopted the following approach for our Waldorf curriculum: that the child, by being educated and taught in the manner of an elementary school right from the start, learns to write through an artistic understanding of the written word, and then learns to read through writing. So we do not introduce the child to foreign-looking written symbols; rather, we seek—from the child’s nature, which, through Spiritual Science, guides us to understand it more precisely—the way in which the hand would naturally move: How does the hand move? What does the hand experience when it makes a stroke, performs an action? We let the child draw. We allow the child to develop what is connected to their elemental nature; and only from this do we develop the written characters. So we start from life and lead toward the abstract. We avoid, at all times, placing the intellectual in the foreground in any way. We start from life.

[ 28 ] And in this way, too, we take our cue from life: for example, we do not introduce into the curriculum the kind of variety that some find so beneficial—where something different is done every hour—but rather we focus on a particular subject during the main school hours until the child has mastered it, until the child has a firm grasp of the material. We therefore do not have a lesson-by-lesson curriculum; rather, for the core subjects, we have a curriculum that stays with the same material for about three months. Of course, this excludes language studies and so on.

[ 29 ] And then we try to time everything that needs to be learned precisely for the moment when the child can develop it on their own. For example, we try to study everything that follows from the fact that, in a sense, what was initially at work in the organism then ceases to be active during the change of teeth, as this process unfolds year by year in the eighth, ninth, and tenth years. We determine what we can teach, for instance, in arithmetic in a given year; what we can teach the child, starting from the very first fundamentals, through nature observation and the study of history. We are trying to bring to life what is often said today but must remain abstract. The pedagogy we have today is not to be criticized at all. I hold in the highest regard what exists in the way of theoretical pedagogy and pedagogical guidance. I do not believe that we can add anything essential in this regard. But where we can contribute something from Spiritual Science—precisely because it is a living discipline—is in awakening the pedagogical approach, the didactic method, and in applying precise knowledge of human nature to the child. Thus, guided by the insights of Spiritual Science, one can carefully study how, around the age of nine, another very important phase begins in the child’s soul. Up to that point, the child is actually always in such a state that it does not differ significantly from the environment. Around the age of nine, the child begins to differ from the environment to such an extent that, from then on, we start to talk to the child about plants and animals in a completely different way than before. And history lessons should, in general, be taught only in a fairy-tale-like and legendary manner, in a pictorial way, prior to that. They should—even at the very earliest stages—only be taught after the child has learned to distinguish itself from its surroundings, that is, around the age of nine.

[ 30 ] Thus, from this fundamental understanding of human nature—which we strive to attain through Spiritual Science, and not merely through general pedagogy and didactics—arises that which shows us what we must accomplish day by day in this human being for the sake of the developing human being’s essence. But all of this still has a tinge of thinking, of the conceptual. There is something else that is far more important.

[ 31 ] Just think for a moment what it means for education if one takes the standpoint that human beings are merely the highest beings in the animal kingdom, and that we must develop in them what they are born with physically. Through Spiritual Science, however, the teacher proceeds from the following foundation: A spiritual-soul being has descended from the spiritual world; it has incarnated in a human being of a physical nature. It has brought spiritual elements from the spiritual world and united them with what originates from the stream of heredity. We have this entire living human enigma before us and must work on its development. — How an immense sense of awe for the developing human being comes over us! For standing before us, awe-inspiring, is what the gods have sent down to us from heaven to earth.

[ 32 ] And the second feeling that comes over us when we stand before a child is an immense sense of responsibility; but it is a sense of responsibility that sustains us, that truly gives us the strength and the will to educate and teach. It is, therefore, that which can enter into people as a living force. I do not wish to be misunderstood; what I mean is: what enters into people as life—not as theory, not as theoretical pedagogy, not as didactic pedagogy—is precisely what comes to us through Spiritual Science. For Spiritual Science does not merely seek to reflect the general life of the world in ideas; it seeks to make people participants in this general life of the world. That is why, in the educational practice that arises from Spiritual Science, certain things play a role that one actually only notices when one engages with this Spiritual Science.

[ 33 ] We often find ourselves in a situation where we want to tell children something that, at first—when we try to explain it to them in abstract terms—is beyond their comprehension. Let’s suppose we want to teach a child about the nature of the immortal human soul. Anyone with experience knows how difficult this is if one wants to approach the matter responsibly and reverently. Let’s suppose—I’ll use an analogy—that we’re looking at a butterfly chrysalis. We say to the child: Look, the butterfly flies out of this chrysalis; you see the butterfly when it emerges from the chrysalis. It is the same with the human soul; the human soul leaves the chrysalis of the body at the moment of death. You just cannot see this soul. — A mental image appears before the children.

[ 34 ] People often think that when one person does something this way, it is the same as when someone else does it that way. Spiritual Science shows us that this is not the case. If, relying on my own cleverness, I first have to think it through to realize that the butterfly chrysalis with the butterfly emerging from it is a symbol of the immortal human soul—if, because the child is less intelligent than I am, I cobble together this image and present it to the child so that the child can understand immortality —if one approaches the child with this mindset, one does not teach the child the truth. Only when one believes in the image oneself can one teach the child the truth. And I confess to you openly: from the perspective of Spiritual Science, this is not a contrived image for me, but rather a fact; the human soul undergoes what the butterfly in the image depicts. And it is not my intellect that has found in this butterfly the image of immortality, but rather: the very same process is present on a lower level of nature. The image is created by nature, by the spirit of nature itself. I do not create the image; rather, I believe that the creative forces of nature, in the butterfly’s flight, present the same thing as the human soul leaving the body. I do not believe that the child is stupid and I am clever; rather, I place myself on the same level, because I have honestly attained in my consciousness what I am telling the child. To the same extent and in the same way that I wish to teach it to the child, I must believe it myself. Then there is something intangible; then it is truly my soul and the child’s soul that, in this moment, are still connected by forces entirely different from the words that live in concepts, thoughts, and theories. This connection with the developing child’s soul through such things—that is what often matters most.

[ 35 ] And once again we see how, in recent times, certain things have been misunderstood in a one-sided way. There has been an ever-increasing effort to teach children only what they can understand. But this leads us further and further down into the most appalling triviality. Just think about how banal, how ordinary, one would have to present things to make them understandable to a child! And when you look at the methodological textbooks that describe how things should be taught—the kind of banalities one is expected to subject a child to—it’s enough to make you want to climb the walls!

[ 36 ] There is simply one thing we do not know—something that is so important and meaningful for human life. As you get to know human life, this is how it is: You sometimes recall—perhaps at the age of thirty-five—something you may have learned in the eighth grade. If you learned it correctly, with the right spirit, you know it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. You also remember: You didn’t understand that; you accepted it on authority. — You felt this way: I’m younger, the teacher is older, he understands it, I don’t. Now, at thirty-five, the whole thing comes back to you. Now you understand it because you’ve become more mature. Once people come to appreciate what it can mean when, later in life, through one’s own maturity, one feels capable of understanding something that one had previously only believed because one held the person who told it in high regard—because that person was an authority—once people come to understand that, then they will also be able to appreciate what it means when Spiritual Science says: One must observe the developing child up to about the age of seven; there one finds that the child is, above all, an imitator. It does everything that its surroundings do. This is a fundamental law of human nature as it develops during these years. One cannot educate a child through admonitions, but only through example—right down into the thoughts. Anyone who harbors impure thoughts in the nursery has a negative influence on the children. For the souls are connected on a subconscious level. Thus, right down to the level of thought, everything is experienced imitative by the child until the change of teeth and is incorporated imitative into the whole human being.

[ 37 ] But then, with the change of teeth—with the emergence of the intellectual aspect of the soul—begins what the human soul desires until sexual maturity: devotion to a revered authority. It is especially important to point out in our time that this corresponds to a law of human development. The child is able to absorb truths during this time precisely because it sees that the revered authority is committed to these truths. Anyone who has not experienced absorbing truths out of a sense of reverence for authority—roughly from the age of seven to fourteen—will later find it difficult to stand in life as an independent and free human being, for they have not developed the proper relationship from person to person within their human nature!

[ 38 ] Therefore, the fundamental principle underlying our educational approach is this: pedagogical and didactic education through imitation up to the age of seven. The elementary school teacher, then, up to the age of fourteen, is left to his own devices to the extent that he is the natural authority figure. It is of immense significance for one’s life to be able to recall later: Through your own maturity, you have now achieved something that was laid the foundation for during your school years. This imparts a special strength. This is how school and education have a lasting impact on later life—when the teacher, through natural authority, teaches the child what the child will only come to understand later. It is generally easy and, at first glance, obvious: one wants to teach the child only what it understands. But then one makes people grow old prematurely. One destroys life. One does not give the person the proper foundation for later life.

[ 39 ] Through these truths, I simply wanted to make clear how—not through theoretical pedagogy, but through what is present in the living human being, what he can become through imbuing himself with Spiritual Science—it is precisely this that is accomplished for the child in human relationships, which we would like to add to the magnificent achievements of 19th-century pedagogy, which has formulated truly magnificent principles. Spiritual Science seeks to enrich living life out of the needs of our time, for it is, after all, a form of knowledge that permeates the human being entirely in his innermost essence. That is why this must also be carried out in every detail. Our educators and pedagogues should work on the basis of direct knowledge of the human being. Therefore, anyone who accuses us of wanting to introduce a new creed or worldview into the school system misjudges what we are striving for.

[ 40 ] At our Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart—which, as you know, reports directly to me and which I am required to inspect from time to time—I stated from the very beginning, since the curriculum and the entire school structure originate with me: It is impossible for us to bring the content of a worldview into the school. Protestant children are taught their faith by Protestant pastors, and Catholic children by Catholic pastors. Children of dissidents can remain children of dissidents. When a number of these children—or rather, their parents—came to us and said: ‘Yes, what you are teaching the children awakens in them the feeling that they, too, must receive a religious impulse’—it was the dissident parents who came, not merely those who belong to any particular denomination; the current denominations do not succeed in directly giving rise to such a vivid religious need. We were compelled—because the religious need arose in the children raised in the anthroposophical tradition out of the spirit of our instruction, and because the dissident parents do not want to send their children to denominational religious instruction—to establish a general religious education program. The children who attend these classes would otherwise have had none at all. And as I said, the Catholic children receive Catholic religious instruction, and the Protestant children receive Protestant religious instruction. Precisely because we do not wish to bring a particular worldview into the school, we can be truly and genuinely tolerant in this regard. And in practice, this tolerance truly bears good fruit. For what we seek is not to introduce a worldview or a creed into the school, but rather a practical pedagogy and didactics that can come from Spiritual Science—and from Spiritual Science alone. In establishing our school, we have a purely objective pedagogical interest, not an interest in promoting any particular worldview. And anyone who claims the latter—that we have an interest, stemming from our Spiritual Science, in promoting such propaganda, in promoting a particular worldview—is lying. Only those who understand that we seek to serve nothing other than practical life—through knowledge that does not stand aloof from this life in some unworldly realm, but is connected to practical life precisely through the insight I have just described to you—can correctly assess what we aim to achieve.

[ 41 ] That is why we were also able to include eurythmy in the curriculum as a required subject. You will not think me so foolish as to object to the beneficial effects of physical education, which were rightly emphasized in the 19th century. But a time will come when people will think about these things more objectively. Then they will realize: Yes, physical education is in harmony with human physiology; it introduces children and adults to physical movements that correspond to the study of the human body. However, we do not add our eurythmy to this by challenging physical education.

[ 42 ] What is eurythmy? First and foremost, it is an art form, as presented here in public performances. But beyond that, it also has a hygienic-therapeutic aspect and, furthermore, a strong pedagogical-didactic element. It is not based on arbitrary, contrived gestures—arising from random connections between external gestures or facial expressions and what is taking place in the soul—but rather on what can be gained through careful study by means of what I would like to call, in the spirit of Goethe, “sensory-supersensory perception.” If one studies the human speech organ more from within and perceives through sensually-supersensual perception what takes place—not in terms of movements or modulations, but in terms of the potential for movement—then one can apply this to the whole human being, entirely in accordance with the principle of Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis. Goethe sees the entire plant as nothing more than a leaf in a more complex form. What Goethe elaborated upon in his morphology with regard to forms—and what will only be fully appreciated later—we seek to apply artistically and functionally to human activity. We set the entire human organism, or groups of people, in motion in ways derived from spoken language. That is to say, we have the hands, legs, and head perform movements that correspond to the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs. We turn the whole human being, so to speak, into a larynx and thus create a soundless but visible language—not a sign language that springs from the whims of the imagination. We create a language that we apply to the human being and his movements. It is just as systematically developed—only through study—as what is naturally produced by the larynx and its neighboring organs.

[ 43 ] And when, after a short break, we have the children perform a short piece—so that the pedagogical and didactic element is also brought to light—you will see that eurythmy, in addition to being an art, is at the same time a form of animated gymnastics. Each movement is not performed out of physiological insight, but out of an understanding of the connection between body and soul. Every movement is imbued with spirit, just as sound is imbued with spirit. The whole human being becomes an organ of speech. This is why what can be artistically shaped in poetry also comes to light here. Today, people have no idea that the prose content is not the main thing when it comes to poetry. After all, ninety-nine percent too much poetry is being written today! What constitutes poetry was based, in the Goethean sense, either on the shaping of language or on the rhythm of language—one need only point to Schiller; one could cite many other examples. Schiller said that poems such as “The Diver” or “The Walk” had not first lived in his soul in prose form, but rather something like music, something like an image, something visionary lived within him. And from this wordless melody, from this wordless imagery, Schiller and Goethe first formed the words, attaching them, as it were, to the wordless, the musical, or the inner plasticity. And so we, too, when we must recite, for example, are compelled to return to the rhythmic quality of ordinary speech. For you will hear that the eurythmic mental image—as I said, the human being as a living larynx moving before you on stage—will be accompanied on the one hand by recitation and on the other by music. It can also be accompanied by that which is not expressed through poetry. But then one must not recite as is done in our unartistic age—when one merely draws the content of the poetry from the depths of the soul—but rather, meter, rhythm, and the connections shaped by rhyme—that is, what is truly artistic—must find expression in the recitation. For with the ordinary, unartistic recitation of today, one could not accompany eurythmy. Therefore, eurythmy will also have a healing effect on what is in decline in our other arts.

[ 44 ] Above all, you will certainly be interested to know that eurythmy contains an educational and didactic element. Gymnastics is excellent for human beings, but it develops only the outer, physical organism. Eurythmy, as a required subject in school, acts above all on what I would like to call the initiative of the will—the independence of the human soul. And that is precisely what we actually need for the next era of humanity. Anyone who looks into the chaos of our social conditions today knows that what people lack above all else is this initiative of the soul.

[ 45 ] As I have already said, teachers and educators cannot do without the awareness that fills them with reverence, but also with responsibility: that they must work with the souls coming from the spiritual world, but in such a way that the next generation enters the world in the right way. Anyone who looks at the world today can already sense how important it is what we, as the next generation, bring into the world. And that is why one feels such inner satisfaction when one can see how—without imposing a worldview on the school—our teachers, for example, teach anthropology in the fifth grade: not in a dry, academic sense, not merely as theoretical anthropological insights, but in such a way that what is first introduced to the children as anthropology is permeated and warmed by the spirit. When children are taught in this way, they begin to engage with the lessons in an entirely different manner; they establish something within themselves that will remain with them for their entire lives.

[ 46 ] I also derived the deepest satisfaction from the way our seventh-grade teacher presented history to the children using this spiritual-scientific approach—but, as I said, not Spiritual Science itself, but history treated using spiritual-scientific methods. In this way, what would otherwise remain more or less foreign to the children is transformed into something the child knows to be directly connected to its own being. And there, one can build a bridge everywhere between what the child learns about the course of human development and what can be instilled in the child so that it may become a useful member of future humanity.

[ 47 ] I wanted to preface the eurythmy performances with these few words. And now, in closing, I would like to say once more: When I look at people like Spitta, at what can flow from a renewal of spiritual life, when, looking at him, I am to express the value judgment about Spiritual Science that inspires me, let me express my joy. This joy most certainly fills those who, here at the Goetheanum and from the Goetheanum, have set themselves tasks in Spiritual Science and in an anthroposophical direction. And I do not hope that it might necessarily be the only right thing to wish for you—after you have been kind enough to listen to me for five-quarters of an hour and after you will still be kind enough, after a short intermission, watch the eurythmy mental image and listen to what is being performed and recited—that afterward you will still need, in the words of the English journalist, six whole days to recover from the “shock” you have suffered!