The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Question and Answer Session at the Parents' Night

Question: In recent times, the principle of visual learning has been revived in the classroom. Now, when children leave school, it becomes apparent that they are helpless in the face of real life when they are expected to think. Because of all the visual learning, they have become fixated on images.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: This is an extraordinarily important educational question of our time: the question [regarding] the use of concrete examples—or, more precisely, the exclusive use of concrete examples—in teaching. Now, this question can perhaps not be addressed exhaustively in a purely specialized manner, but only within the broader context of educational thought as a whole. In this regard, I would first like to mention that teaching in the Waldorf school is based on our understanding of human development. After all, the Waldorf school is certainly not an ideologically driven school, but whatever can be achieved in terms of pedagogical skill, pedagogical methodology, and the pedagogical handling of matters—precisely out of an anthroposophical outlook on the soul—should be put into practice for the benefit of the Waldorf school. In this practical context, the view that a child up to about the age of six or seven is essentially an imitative being plays a major role. The child is an imitator well into this age. This goes so far that at this age—that is, at the kindergarten age—teaching in the conventional sense should not actually take place; rather, one should rely on the child’s capacity for imitation. You see, when you’ve been dealing with such matters for decades, as I’ve had to, you’ve gained all sorts of experience. People come to you and ask about all kinds of things. Once, a father came to me, quite distraught, and said, “What should we do? Our boy, who’s always been a good boy, has stolen something.” - I asked the father, “How old is the boy?” - “Four or five years old.” - “Then,” I said, “we must first investigate whether he really stole anything.” - The investigation revealed that the little boy hadn’t stolen anything at all, even though he had taken money from a drawer. He had simply seen every day that his mother gave money to the delivery person from her drawer. He thought: “If Mom did it that way, then it must be right”—and he simply took money from the drawer too. He bought snacks, but didn’t eat them himself; instead, he gave them away. The child was simply imitating others, as is typical for his age. What he did was simply an act of imitation. The point is that you really shouldn’t do anything in front of children of this age that they aren’t allowed to imitate. - Then begins the stage of life that starts with the change of teeth and ends with sexual maturity—that is, the actual elementary school age. This elementary school age simply demands—and what is demanded today by certain political factions must be set aside; practical matters must take precedence—this age demands that the child learn to understand and act in accordance with authority. It is of particular importance for the child’s entire future life—especially in preparing them for difficult times ahead and for all the challenges life may bring—that during this stage of life, from approximately the seventh to the fourteenth year, the child accepts things based on authority. This relationship—in which the teacher and educator possesses a natural authority over the child—is something that cannot be replaced by anything else throughout a person’s entire later life. One could very easily find evidence of what a person will lack later on if they did not have the great good fortune to have a figure of natural authority by their side.

[ 2 ] It is at this stage of life that the question of visual instruction arises. This visual instruction, as it is demanded today, has, in its extreme form, grown out of materialism. The aim is simply to present everything before the eye. People believe in nothing other than what is before their eyes; thus, everything is to be presented before the child as well. But this gives rise not only to the difficulties you have highlighted, but also to others that arise on the part of the teachers. Just take a look at the teacher’s guides written for educators, which provide instructions for visual instruction. The banalities and trivialities served up there are nothing short of outrageous. There is an instinctive, constant drive to reduce everything to the lowest possible level. This is the kind of visual instruction in which the child is taught nothing more than what it already knows. This is the worst possible kind of instruction, one that provides visual examples in this manner. The best education is that which provides not only for childhood but for a person’s entire life. If life is not such that, even in one’s fortieth or fiftieth year, one still benefits from having sat in school, then the education was poor. One must be able to look back on one’s school education in such a way that living forces reside in that recollection. After all, we also grow as our limbs become longer and many other aspects of our being are transformed; everything about us matures. If we teach children concepts, mental images, and insights that do not grow—that remain static, and where we place great value on them staying exactly as they are—then we are violating the principle of growth. We must present things to the child in such a way that they are integrated into this living growth. We cannot achieve this through flat, banal visual instruction, but rather when we, as educators, engage with the child—that is when intangible factors come into play.

[ 3 ] I very often use an example like this: Let’s suppose we want to teach a child a concept—something that can be done purely on the basis of an understanding of child psychology at a certain age—namely, the concept of immortality. We can make this concrete by referring to natural processes, for example, the butterfly in its chrysalis. We can say: Just as the butterfly is enclosed in its chrysalis, so the immortal soul is enclosed within the human being—only that it develops into a spiritual world, just as the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. —That is a metaphor. One can teach this image to the child in two different ways. The first is to think: I am the teacher; I am incredibly smart; the child is young and terribly stupid. So I will present this symbol to the child to represent this concept. I myself have, of course, long since moved beyond this, but the child is to grasp the immortality of the soul in this way. Now I’m explaining this in an intellectualistic way. — This is the way in which the child learns nothing; not because what is presented is wrong, but because one is not attuned to the child in the right way. When I immerse myself in anthroposophical Spiritual Science, it is not an image through which I feel smarter than the child, but a truth. Nature itself has placed, on a lower level, the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, and on a higher level, the passage through the gate of death. If I bring what lives so vividly within me to the child, then the child benefits from it.

[ 4 ] One cannot simply say that one should do it this way or that way; rather, it comes down to intangible factors—a certain state of mind that one possesses as a teacher—that is what matters. This is where the difficulties arise when one remains stuck in superficial, illustrative instruction, which is becoming increasingly impersonal; at an age when the teacher should be playing the important role of a natural authority figure, he steps aside. There are, for example, certain things that one should simply pass on to the child on the basis of authority. One cannot teach the child everything through visual instruction—for example, moral concepts: here one cannot proceed from visual instruction, nor even from mere commandments; these can only be conveyed to the child through the path of self-evident authority. And it is one of the most significant experiences one can have later in life—when something absorbed in the eighth, ninth, or twelfth year is recognized as true because a revered figure regards it as such—this relationship to the revered figure is among the intangible elements of instruction and upbringing— you turn thirty, and upon a certain experience, it rises up from the depths of human consciousness; now you begin to understand something of what you actually absorbed twenty or thirty years ago, back then on the basis of authority. This signifies something immense in life. It is, in fact, a living growth beyond what one absorbed in childhood. That is why all this discussion about more or less “intuition” is not so important. Things must reveal themselves through the object itself. Similarly, discussing more or less “thinking” and so on is also of little importance. What is important is that teachers are placed in their proper roles, that the human element is brought together in the right way within a school organization. That is where the goal must primarily be seen. Curricula or anything that can be set out in paragraphs are of no use in real life—and the life of teaching and education is real life. For if three or six or twelve people get together, regardless of their backgrounds, the circles they come from, or their prior education, they will be able to draw up an ideally beautiful curriculum. If one somehow puts something like that together in a paragraph-by-paragraph manner based on reflection, it can become ideally beautiful; it can contain the most wonderful things. I’m not mocking it—it doesn’t have to be bad; it can be extraordinarily beautiful and magnificent—but that’s not what matters. What matters is that within the school—which has a number of teachers—real life unfolds; each of these teachers has their own special abilities—that is the reality, and that is what must be worked with. What good is it if the teacher can point to this or that as the learning objective?—That is merely an abstraction. What the teacher can be to the children as a person—by being engaged with the world in a certain way—that is what matters. The issue of schooling in our present time is essentially a question of teachers, and from this perspective, all more detailed questions—such as the question of visual instruction and the like—should be addressed. So, for example, is it possible to teach children in a completely extreme way through visual instruction? — I must say, I do feel a slight sense of dread when I see these ordeals with calculators in a classroom, where people even want to turn subjects that should be taught in a completely different way into visual instruction. If one insists on proceeding solely with pure visual instruction, the result—and of course these are observations based on an unbiased assessment—is that the children become clumsy. — This has nothing to do with phenomenology or phenomenalism: to develop proper phenomenalism, one must first and foremost be able to think. In school, we are dealing with pedagogical methodology, not scientific methodology. But one must realize how closely proper thinking is connected not only to the human brain and head, but to the whole person. The dexterity one possesses in one’s fingers depends on the way in which one has learned to think. For in reality, a person thinks with their entire body. Today, people believe that a person thinks with their nervous system, but in truth, they think with their entire organism. And the reverse is also true: If one can naturally teach a child quickness of thought—even, to a certain degree, presence of mind—in the right way, one is working toward physical dexterity; and if one cultivates this mental dexterity right down into the physical realm, then the children’s own dexterity also comes to one’s aid. What we have now established in the Waldorf school is far more important: instead of the usual visual instruction in handicrafts, children move on to self-modeling, through which they develop a sense of the artistic shaping of the surface. This, in turn, leads to a mathematical understanding of the plane in later grades. This immersion in things—not through mere visual instruction for the senses, but through a form of education that involves living in harmony with the entire environment, aimed at the whole person—is what we must strive for.

[ 5 ] I just wanted to point out that such questions should be considered within the broader context of educational thought and that today there is far too much discussion focused on specific details.

[ 6 ] Rudolf Steiner, following up on other questions: What was said earlier and has often been emphasized must be made clear: The Waldorf school, as such, does not intend to be a school based on a particular worldview. The fact that it is based on an anthroposophical worldview is true only insofar as this is translated into educational practice. Thus, what we see in the Waldorf School is, first and foremost, a development of what can be achieved through purely pedagogical means stemming from the anthroposophical movement. The Waldorf School cannot and does not intend to be a school based on any particular worldview. For this reason, the Waldorf School has never—until now—claimed the right to take religious instruction for the children entrusted to it into its own hands. Ultimately, the views held by individual anthroposophists regarding questions of worldview are irrelevant; rather, the point is that anthroposophy seeks to influence the school and all that pertains to it solely through pedagogical practice. For this reason, when the school was established, religious instruction for Catholic children was entrusted to the Catholic pastor, and religious instruction for Protestant children to the Protestant pastor. Now it so happened—simply as a result of the circumstances of the time—that there were quite a number of children from non-religious families who would otherwise have grown up without any religious upbringing. For these children, religious instruction is now provided; however, this is not considered part of the school curriculum as such, but rather stands alongside the Protestant and Catholic religious instruction as independent religious instruction. We have at least achieved the result that children who otherwise would simply not be admitted to any religious instruction are now, through this arrangement, growing up with a religious life. This is independent religious instruction taught by someone who understands the subject and who is called to this task just as the others who teach Catholic and Protestant classes are. However, it must be strictly emphasized that the Waldorf School’s intentions are in no way ideological. The aim is not to indoctrinate students in anthroposophy; rather, anthroposophy is intended to become merely a pedagogical practice within the school. Therefore, the questions regarding this matter resolve themselves; they are of no significance. Initially, the issue was that we had to find an appropriate path to what follows from practical experience. We have our own views—which are well-founded—on how a seven-, eight-, or nine-year-old child should be taught. We simply believed we had to decide these matters based on purely objective principles. Now, of course, the Waldorf school is not an institution for hermits or sects, but rather an institution that seeks to engage fully with life, one that aims to shape children into capable individuals for contemporary, entirely practical life. Therefore, the challenge is to organize instruction in such a way that, on the one hand, strict pedagogical requirements are met, and on the other hand, the Waldorf School is not just some institution for eccentrics. I then worked out the system so that, from the time children enter school through the completion of third grade, there is complete freedom within each grade level; however, by the end of third grade, the children are ready to transfer to any school. From ninth through twelfth grade, there is again complete freedom, and by then the child must once more be ready to transfer to any other school—the same applies upon completion of elementary school. So far, we have been establishing one class each year; what happens next will have to be studied.

[ 7 ] As you can see, it is not a matter of acting based on party-political views, a worldview, or anything of that sort, but simply a matter of putting anthroposophy into educational practice. The ideal would be for the children, at first—since anthroposophy is designed only for adults; we have no curriculum for children, nor have we yet been in a position to want one—not to know that anthroposophy exists, but rather to be raised objectively and thus fully integrated into life in this way. These things cannot be achieved in an ideal sense; even if the teacher tries as hard as possible to remain objective, one child lives in the circle of these parents, another in the circle of those parents; there are also anthroposophical fanatics, and so the children—just as they bring all sorts of other things with them—bring anthroposophical misbehaviors, which do exist, into the school. It must be firmly stated that the Waldorf school can never be, in any way, a school based on a particular worldview or anything of the sort. It is not that in any sense whatsoever; rather, it aims to develop the children into capable individuals in the immediate present—that is, in the life in which we are placed within the state and everything else that matters—so that they can function effectively within it. It goes without saying that the Waldorf school does not, for example, introduce ideas of social threefolding into the school. Given the aims of Waldorf education, this cannot happen. Nothing partisan is brought into the Waldorf school from the anthroposophical side.

Question: Isn't the method the pastor uses somewhat at odds with the rest of the instruction? Isn't there a conflict there?

[ 8 ] Rudolf Steiner: Nothing in life can be achieved perfectly. It would be very nice if we could find not only a Protestant pastor but also a Catholic priest who would teach according to our methodology. As I said, our school aims only to put educational practice into action, not to promote a worldview. The other can go hand in hand with that. Now, it goes without saying that in independent religious education—since there has been a request for such a program, to be taught exclusively by anthroposophists—our methodology is also followed. We would very much like to see Protestant and Catholic instruction taught in this way as well, but we have not yet achieved that.

Question: What is the content of the curriculum for anthroposophical children?

[ 9 ] Rudolf Steiner: The material is designed in such a way that an effort is made to take the child’s age fully into account. This is what always underlies it psychologically. The point with all things is that they are most effectively conveyed to the child when one precisely matches the age at which they are to be introduced—the age at which the child’s inner being resonates most strongly with these things. The fact is that in the seventh and eighth years of life, one achieves the least with objective instruction in the Gospels or the Bible, and absolutely nothing with catechism. The child does not absorb this. This is an anthropological law. In contrast, at this age the child absorbs very well everything religious that can be derived directly from a certain configuration of natural processes—all ethical and genuinely religious concepts that can be formed from natural processes. Above all, one can lead the child to religious feeling indirectly through images of nature.

[ 10 ] It is really only possible to guide a child toward a true Christian sensibility starting at the age of eight, or even closer to nine. That is when the child actually begins to grasp, for example, what lies behind the figure of Christ Jesus. The child gradually grows into these concepts, which must be taught to them if they are to grasp the content of the Gospels. It is good if they have a foundation and are only introduced to the content of the Gospels around the age of nine, and then gradually led further into the deeper mysteries of Christianity. It must be emphasized that this free religious education is, in the most eminent sense, thoroughly Christian; thus, the various denominations participating in it are introduced to true Christianity. It is indeed the case that, precisely from the anthroposophical point of view, one has already come to this [Christian] conviction if one is a teacher at a Waldorf school. One has entered Christianity from this perspective. One might phrase it differently, but the children are introduced to true Christianity. Just as we leave Protestant and Catholic religious instruction entirely up to the schools, so too do we leave the free religious instruction—conducted from an anthroposophical perspective—entirely up to the schools. It has never been my intention to actively encourage children to participate in these voluntary religious education classes. Many have attended, but it is truly not my intention to harm the school’s public reputation by allowing it to be perceived—through such indirect means—as a school based on a particular worldview. We do not wish to be that, at least not initially. That is why we are cautious regarding the free religious education classes and offer them only because they are in demand.