The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Speech at the Parents' Night

[ 1 ] My dear friends, distinguished guests! You have chosen the Waldorf School—which has now been in existence for more than a year—to entrust your children’s education to it. If we wish to reach a common understanding—in just a few brief remarks, for that is all we can manage in this short time—of the methods, teaching style, and educational approach at the Waldorf School, we would do best to begin by mentioning what we need far more at the Waldorf School than at any other school. If we are to move forward in the right way at this school, we need—more than at any other school—a trusting partnership with the parents. Our teachers are entirely dependent on establishing this trusting partnership with the children’s parents. For our school is built through and through on spiritual freedom—by which I certainly do not mean some fanciful notion of the children’s spiritual freedom. Our school positions itself within general cultural life as a free school in the best sense of the word. Just consider how school life today is otherwise shaped by public pressure and public authority. It is conceived entirely within the framework of state institutions; it is meant to serve only those institutions and, above all, to supply the state with the kind of people it needs. The realization that this is not, at the same time, in the interest of truly healthy human development is the foundation upon which the Waldorf School was established. Above all, it is intended to serve healthy human development. All teaching and education at the Waldorf School is to be based on healthy human development.

[ 2 ] You see, people today very often say that schools should develop a child’s individuality; that one shouldn’t cram knowledge into a child, but rather draw out what lies within the child. — That is a very fine principle. There are, in fact, many such fine principles in the educational literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. For this educational literature, from which teachers are supposed to learn how to teach, is not bad at all in the abstract. An extraordinary amount of good has been said about the educational system by all sorts of very philanthropic people; but one cannot say that these good intentions are always matched by what one might call teaching practice and educational practice. And that is actually what matters to us here at the Waldorf School: to develop a genuine, authentic educational practice and teaching practice. And I do indeed believe that through the cultivation of spiritual life that takes place specifically within our circles, we can discover a true educational and teaching practice. For this cultivation of spiritual life is intended, more than any other form of such cultivation, to enable us to get to know human beings better. And this applies not only to adults but also to the developing human being—the child.

[ 3 ] This developing human being—people often believe they understand him in the right way. Certainly, there is a human relationship in which—at least as a rule, indeed even more so than is often assumed of those who are not close to children—there is a quite good understanding of the developing human being, the child; this is the relationship of the father and mother to the child. The relationship of the father and mother to the child is a natural one. It is one in which one grows into life together with the child. There, one does the right thing out of a certain feeling. Certainly, one sometimes does the wrong thing as well; but that then lies more or less in unnatural circumstances, in an unnatural development of the proper fatherly and motherly feelings.

[ 4 ] But when the child reaches the age when the teeth begin to change, what the family home can offer the child is no longer enough; otherwise, there would be no need for schools. Then the child must go to school. And then the issue is that the child must receive an education and be able to engage with instruction in which, based on a conscious understanding of the child’s nature, the human being—the human being in the making—can be guided toward life. But for this to happen, the teacher and educator must possess a genuine understanding of the human being. And a true understanding of the human being actually requires a life lived in the noblest form of scholarship—the scholarship of the soul. A true understanding of the human being demands a free, penetrating gaze into the whole world. For the human being is shaped out of the whole world. And whoever cannot maintain a warm interest in understanding the world cannot look into the human soul—especially not into the human soul that is only just beginning to mature into a fully formed human being within the child. And whoever cannot feel all that exists in the world in the physical realm, all that pervades the world in the soul realm, and all that the world contains in the spiritual realm—such a person cannot recognize the essence of the child; for within the child there is still something of the mysterious workings of that which a human being brings with them when they descend from entirely different worlds—from spiritual worlds—to their parents and take on a body from them. When one observes the child in the first years of life, week by week, month by month—one truly witnesses the most wondrous aspect of the entire process of world-becoming; when one observes how something initially indeterminate grows forth spiritually through the child’s physicality; how the indeterminate features, which still bear something of the merely natural, are shaped by the inner spiritual and soul life; how the soul gradually emerges through the eye, which gazes ever more intelligently into life—thus the most wondrous secrets of the world are revealed. It is then something truly marvelous to see how the child grows together with its surroundings, how, in what it does—albeit still clumsily—it almost completely imitates what it sees in its environment; how it finally grows together with its surroundings as it learns to speak. The first seven years of a child’s life are, after all, entirely devoted to this process of growing together with its surroundings. And then, when the child is taken into school around the time when the change of teeth approaches, everything one does with the child must be grounded in this understanding of human nature. But it must also be grounded in something else.

[ 5 ] One might think one understands the nature of the developing human being. But one must draw out from this nature of the developing human being that which will then lead the child to read, write, and do arithmetic. One soon realizes just how complex a matter true knowledge of human nature is. One may have learned how to teach reading, writing, and so on in a thoroughly methodical way at teacher-training colleges. One can then strive to apply what one has learned there, and one can even do so very well, in a sensible way, to a certain extent; and yet: one achieves nothing in teaching and in education at school unless there is a very specific relationship between the teacher and the child—a relationship of genuine love from the teacher toward the child and from the child toward the teacher. This is what we truly wish to cultivate in our Waldorf school; we wish to cultivate it as something that is just as necessary from a pedagogical and didactic standpoint as mere external skill. We want an atmosphere of love to prevail in every classroom, and for instruction to be given out of this atmosphere of love.

[ 6 ] But this love cannot be dictated. It is not enough to simply preach about this love in teacher-training colleges, the institutions that prepare people for the teaching profession. Love cannot be taught so easily. But as a teacher, one actually needs more love than one needs for one’s personal life. You see, the amount of love that people otherwise muster for their children—no matter how large the number—is small compared to what a teacher needs; after all, no one has as many children as a teacher usually has to teach in a class. Then, later in life, one focuses on the love of a husband for his wife, or a wife for her husband, and that, too, is something that should be kept within a closer circle; for it is not good for this love to be divided too widely among many people—there, what is meant to flow out from a person into life as love is distributed among relatively few people. Certainly, one can—and indeed should—love all people; but that still remains within certain limits. One can only live up to the saying “Be embraced, millions!” to a certain degree.

[ 7 ] But the same degree of love—albeit perhaps in a slightly different form, such as that which parents have for their children, a man for his beloved wife, or a woman for her beloved husband—the same love, just as intense, must absolutely be present in the teacher’s heart toward the children; translated more into the emotional and spiritual realms, but it must be there. This love is not innate; rather, it must be derived from something entirely different. It must come from a science, from a form of knowledge—but from a science that is not as dry or abstract as today’s natural sciences or any other branch of science, just as the entire scientific world, with its dryness and sobriety, rubs off on pedagogy. One can only derive this love from a science that truly deals with the spirit, that reveals the spirit. For where a science imparts the spirit, there it also imparts love. And so the cultivation of the spiritual—that spiritual science which led to the founding of the Waldorf School—imparts this genuine love to the teachers. And this is what is needed; everything must be founded upon it. It is precisely the most natural methods in school that must be grounded in this love. It is the spirit of understanding the world and this spirit of love that, above all else, must be present in the instruction we cultivate at the Waldorf School, in the education we seek to provide there. And this cannot be achieved with general platitudes; it can only be achieved if one knows how to apply, month by month and year by year, in concrete detail, what one knows about the child’s development.

[ 8 ] In today’s conventional schooling, they begin right away by exposing children to something that stifles the healthy development of the human being. Look back at the history of human development. There have been times—and we must not be so arrogant as to regard the people of those times as merely stupid and childish—when people had not yet learned to read and write in the modern sense, at most only primitive arithmetic. Today we learn to read and write, but we do not learn the very reading and writing that first developed out of not reading and not writing; rather, today we learn something that has already become very intellectual and conventional. Essentially, the child is introduced in a completely artificial way to something foreign to them when they are simply taught the reading and writing that is customary in human interaction today. When a child enters the first grade, one must be careful not to forcefully drill into them what adults are now expected to know. And this brings me straight to a point that our esteemed Mr. Molt has already alluded to: that in Waldorf schools, children learn to read and write somewhat later than in other schools. There are good reasons for this. Teaching children to read and write early in other schools is, in many respects, a mistake. For the point is not to equip children with certain skills as quickly as possible, but to help them become capable individuals later in life—people who do not make their own lives miserable or unnecessarily difficult. External circumstances can already make life difficult enough for many people; there is no need for a sense of inner weakness or a feeling of inadequacy to emerge and make life even more miserable. A method must be found to teach reading and writing in a very careful manner, drawing on the children’s natural inclinations and aptitudes.

[ 9 ] We assume—and I just want to mention this—that we first have the child draw certain shapes so that the shapes inherent in the letters can develop from them. We have the child start with writing in order to move on to reading. For the more one starts from what is rooted in the whole human being, the better it is for the child’s development. Reading and writing, as we adults use them for our social interactions or for taking in various aspects of intellectual and other aspects of life, are such that in reading, the symbols that make up our words—the symbols for our letters—have already become something entirely conventional. Ancient peoples still used pictographic writing; there was something concrete in this pictographic writing. There was still a connection between what was used to express something in writing and what was to be expressed. In our letters, nothing can be recognized anymore of what is to be expressed. Therefore, if one teaches children the letters in the simple form they have taken on through a long process of development, one is forcing the child to grapple with something foreign to them. From what the child likes to draw—what it creates from the very core of its being—one must guide it in a reasonable, sensible way toward the forms of the letters. Only then can reading be developed from this.

[ 10 ] With this example, I simply wanted to show you what our art of education is aiming for: to truly discern from the developing human being what one should do with him or her. Anyone who understands human nature knows quite well how things in life are interconnected. Yet what is most important here is something that is often observed very little in life. One often encounters people—and today there are far more of them than one might think—who take little joy in anything, who tire terribly easily, who age prematurely, at least emotionally and spiritually, and so on. People do not realize where this stems from. It stems from the fact that the child was not taught to read and write properly in the sixth, seventh, or eighth year. Anyone who understands human nature knows that a child who has learned to read the right way—not by having it crammed or drilled into them until the age of seven or eight, but by learning to read and write in a proper, natural way, and who therefore may have mastered it a little later—will, in return, possess what they have gained from learning to read and write as a truly valuable gift for their entire life.

[ 11 ] Through all sorts of artificial cramming that ignores the child’s natural inclinations and developmental potential, it is possible to get a child to read and write by the age of seven and a half; but in many respects, such a child has been emotionally crippled for life. If, on the other hand, one has proceeded in the right way, then the child has not learned to read and write until the age of eight—but in such a way that vital forces have arisen within the child through the learning process. And that is what we want. We want the child to gain vital force from school, a force that continues to have a lasting effect on the child throughout their entire life.

[ 12 ] We find ourselves today—and this certainly goes without saying, especially for the people of Central Europe—in a terrible situation. Hardship and misery are certainly not diminishing; on the contrary, they are growing almost every day. And one can certainly say: Much of this stems simply from the fact that people can no longer find their way in life, cannot adapt to life. Now, the most crucial time for a person to find their way in life is not, however, their school years, but a much later period; it is the time of one’s twenties, between the ages of twenty and thirty. It is the period that earlier eras—which we neither wish nor are able to long for—called the transition from the apprenticeship to the mastery. There is sometimes something extraordinarily sensible in such terms for transitions. —It is during this time that a person truly comes into their own. That is when they must find the path to becoming skilled in life. Something occurs then that I would like to compare to the following. I would like to remind you of an image I take from nature. There are certain rivers in Carinthia and Carniola; such a river, which begins to flow from its source, is first called the Poik. Then it disappears into a hole and is no longer visible. After some time, it reemerges. It is the same river; it has simply continued flowing underground. Then, further along its course, it is called the Unz. Then it disappears again, flows underground once more, reemerges, and is then called the Laibach. It keeps reemerging; it is the same water, except that it flows underground at times. So it is with human life. There is something in human life during the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh years of life—and also during school years—which is the child’s inclination to play. Everything that is part of a child’s play is particularly vivid at this age. Then, like this river, it descends into the depths of human life. One then sees, when puberty sets in and other things come into play, that this urge to play is no longer active in the same way. But then, when one reaches one’s twenties, the very same force that was active in play emerges once more. However, it is no longer active merely as an urge to play; it has now become something else. It has now become the way in which a person can find their place in life. And indeed, this is true: if one allows the child to play in the right way according to his or her particular aptitudes, if one teaches the child the right games, then the child will be able to adapt to life in the right way. If one misses the mark with regard to the child’s nature in the games one introduces to the child, then the child will also be clumsy in finding his or her place in life. - This is how things are connected: what is the play instinct—the particular way a child plays—disappears, seeps away into life. Then it resurfaces, but it is now something else; it is now life skill, the ability to adapt to life. Life is thoroughly interconnected across all stages of life. One must understand this in order to teach and raise the child in the right way.

[ 13 ] For example, there is a very important stage in a child’s life; sometimes it comes a little earlier, sometimes a little later, but it always occurs roughly between the ages of nine and ten. At this stage of life, it is of the utmost importance that the child have a genuine sense of respect and reverence for the teacher. Of course, this should be present at other times as well, but at this particular stage, something truly essential is determined for the child. It is of truly extraordinary significance. That is why the art of education is so difficult to master; it is based on a thorough understanding of human nature. Much of what occurs in people at much later stages of life—which often makes them quite unhappy, prevents them from finding their place in life, renders them incapable of work, and can even lead to a predisposition to physical illness—is not believed today, but it is true—all of this stems from the fact that the child was not treated properly between the ages of nine and ten. Up until the ages of nine to ten, one must try to engage the child as much as possible with educational material that does not force them to think too much about themselves, but rather about the things that exist out there in the world. And between the ages of nine and ten, one must begin to teach the child concepts and mental images about plants and animals in such a way that the child makes the transition from reflecting on the world to reflecting on itself. All instruction must be structured so that one begins with a particular subject at precisely the right moments—when, so to speak, the child’s inner nature demands it.

[ 14 ] I will now briefly outline for you what true insight into human nature—derived from Spiritual Science—actually is, and how it is what truly makes it possible to develop a genuine art of education. This art of education, built upon a genuine understanding of Human Nature based on Spiritual Science, should permeate the entire Waldorf school; it should be the spirit that reigns within the Waldorf school. And we truly believe that much of what is so painful in the present cries out for the next generation to be equipped through such an education. And we believe that those parents who entrust their children with understanding to a school organized on the basis of genuine, thorough knowledge of human nature truly understand what our times demand. And from such a relationship between parents and the school—which is an integral part of our entire work—arises what we need in the school. When the child enters the school in the morning in such a way that the parents, who themselves have the right kind of love for the school based on this understanding, send the child off with that love, then the child will also be able to experience in the right way what should be offered to him or her above all else when he or she opens the school door and meets the teacher with that love from which alone what constitutes truly proper instruction and a proper education can spring.

[ 15 ] By engaging the child at the right moment with what is currently within their abilities and aptitudes, we ensure that what we have introduced becomes a source of refreshment for the child throughout their entire life. And when the parents of our children come to understand that our true aim is to prepare, over the coming decades, people who are capable of coping with life as it grows ever more challenging—yet who are also free to continue asking questions about life—then the parents will support our school in the right way. For we must build upon this understanding on the part of the parents. We cannot operate in the same way as other schools, protected by the state and by all manner of authorities. We can only function if we are supported by a community of understanding parents. If, mindful of what we have in the children at our school—whom we seek to teach based on a genuine understanding of human nature and an awareness of which parts of the curriculum are most relevant at any given time—we always strive to give these children the very best that should be given to them, then we need this school to be surrounded by parental understanding, just as a fortress is surrounded by walls. It is with this awareness that our teachers can teach most effectively. We here love our children; we teach out of an understanding of human nature and a love for children, and around us another kind of love is taking shape—the love of parents for our school system. Only within this community can we truly continue to work toward a prosperous future for humanity in the face of the lack of understanding and the alarming moral decline that exist today.

[ 16 ] For the work that is to be done in this sense may involve only a small community today; but much can come of this small community if it consistently approaches this school with the right understanding.

[ 17 ] Our teachers need this kind of awareness because they do not have, as it were, all those coercive measures in the background that teachers at other schools have. But nothing sensible is ever achieved in human life through coercion. In order for us to be able to work freely, we need parents to understand the importance of free action. And the fact that a truly substantial number of people have already come together to send their children to Waldorf schools shows that such an understanding has at least begun to take root. Of course, we would like to see it spread further and further, so that more and more people would come to realize that something worthwhile can only be achieved through a genuine, true art of education. But on evenings such as this one, we should at least be glad that we can come together in the spirit of saying to one another: We want to bring about a better future for humanity by working together with those who wish to educate and teach future generations in the spirit of genuine knowledge of human nature and love for humanity.

[ 18 ] Of course, even with the best of intentions, we cannot achieve what we envision as our ideal right from the very start; yet, at least some progress has been made. Nor can our understanding be completely thorough right from the beginning. Some things may easily be misunderstood. Under certain circumstances, people might say: “Yes, in this school, some children aren’t beaten enough, because for some children, either actual or figurative beatings are absolutely necessary.” - Yes, people sometimes say such things not out of a thorough understanding of human nature or love for humanity; for there are methods which, even if they sometimes take longer to work, nevertheless develop the good in people more reliably than any unnatural coercive measures. And for many things, understanding must simply be gained little by little.

[ 19 ] You see, I was told the other day that a boy who joined our school—a thoughtful young man who’s really learning the material thoroughly here—said: “I don’t know—I used to go to a different school—he just joined us recently—where we learned arithmetic, math, geometry, and all sorts of things; and now I’m supposed to become a capable person; but at this school, I’m not learning any math at all; what’s going to become of me if I don’t learn any math?” —How did it come about that the boy believed he wasn’t learning any mathematics? You see, our aim is to foster natural conditions with regard to what the so-called “curriculum” in other schools is supposed to achieve. There, the child is driven from one subject to the next; there is no opportunity for concentration at all. We teach so that the child can fully immerse themselves in the material, covering the same subject for weeks on end throughout their entire elementary school years, two hours each morning; we do not jump from subject to subject hour by hour; we only change subjects after some time has passed. Now, the boy happened to arrive at a time when mathematics was not on the schedule. So he believed he wasn’t learning any mathematics at all. Later, of course, he realizes that he is studying mathematics with concentration precisely because he is not being rushed from one subject to another every hour, so that he now learns mathematics all the more thoroughly. Such misunderstandings can easily arise, even if they are not, as in this case, immediately obvious. It must be said: Even if some things at the Waldorf School look different from what one is used to from the past, one should not be too quick to judge.

[ 20 ] The things we cultivate here are truly drawn from what I have called “knowledge of human nature.” And that is precisely what characterizes our school. That is also why, as far as we can tell, the children are exceptionally eager to come to school. I do, after all, come to the school from time to time and participate in the lessons. We strive to work in a way that draws on the child’s natural disposition, so that the child, as it were, feels: “I really want to know and be able to do what I’m supposed to know and do”—and so that the child does not feel that something is being forced upon them. Of course, this must be developed in a specific way for each school subject, since every child is different.

[ 21 ] And then the entire educational process must be permeated by a certain educational principle. This can only be achieved if the teacher is fully immersed in spiritual life. He cannot do this unless he also recognizes his responsibility toward spiritual life. But, ladies and gentlemen, one bears this great responsibility toward spiritual life only when it is not to be replaced by a merely external sense of responsibility. If one merely follows the regulations for each school year, one believes oneself to be free from the necessity of exploring, week by week through lived experience, what one must undertake with regard to each individual subject in school, and how one must undertake it. This constant drawing from the living spiritual source—that is what should be characteristic of our teachers. One must feel responsible toward spiritual life. Then one must recognize that spiritual life is free; then the school must have self-governance; then the teacher must not be a civil servant; he must be completely his own master; for he recognizes a higher authority than any external body—spiritual life itself, to which he has a direct relationship, not mediated through school authorities, principals, school inspectors, superintendents, teachers, and so on. A truly free school life necessarily requires this direct connection to the sources of spiritual life. For only when one possesses this within oneself can one also convey the spiritual source to the children in the classroom. This is what we strive for more and more; this is what we want. And even during the time we have been active, we have carefully examined, month by month, how our principles and our pedagogical guidelines affect the children. And in the years to come, many things will unfold from different perspectives—more complete perspectives—than in the past. And so we wish to lead this school precisely from a life lived in the here and now—a life that cannot be otherwise when it flows from spiritual foundations.

[ 22 ] Please do not worry that we intend to turn this school into a school based on a particular worldview or that we want to indoctrinate the children with anthroposophical or other dogmas. That would never occur to us. Anyone who would say that we want to teach the children certain things that are specifically anthroposophical beliefs would not be telling the truth. Rather, we want to develop a pedagogical art precisely out of what anthroposophy means to us. The “how” of teaching—that is what we want to gain from our spiritual insight. We do not want to indoctrinate the children with what we believe; rather, we believe that Spiritual Science differs from every other branch of science in that it fills the whole human being, making them skilled in all areas—above all in dealing with other people. We want to focus on this “how,” not on the “what.” The “what” arises from social necessities; this must be discerned with keen interest from what a person needs to know and be able to do if they are to take their place in the present age as a capable individual. But the “how”—how to teach children—arises only from a thorough, deep, and loving understanding of human nature. This is what should prevail and take effect in our Waldorf school.

[ 23 ] That is what I wanted to say today, my dear friends, to emphasize how, on the one hand, we truly need the parents of our children to be close friends of our school. The more we can feel that these parents are true friends of our school, the better and more effectively we will be able to accomplish what we set out to do in this school. — We need our teaching staff and all those involved in our educational work to live continually in a spirit of love for teaching and for working with children. This is achieved when there is a genuine, spiritual life behind our teaching staff and behind all those involved with our school—a spiritual life that is sincerely and honestly committed to the spiritual, economic, and political advancement and progress of humanity. It is achieved by ensuring that this spirit of teaching—and the skill in the art of teaching—as they are to be practiced in our school, are surrounded by the protective wall formed by parents who are understanding and accommodating toward us, and who are devoted to our school in heartfelt friendship. If we have this, then, my dear friends, the work of our school will succeed, and we can be convinced, my dear, esteemed guests, that by doing good at our school and for your children, we are also, at the same time, doing good for all of humanity as it is meant to develop into the future. For to carry out a proper educational endeavor, a proper school endeavor, means at the same time to carry out a serious, genuine work toward human progress.

Discussion at the Parent-Teacher Conference

[ 24 ] Mr. Molt thanks Dr. Steiner for his presentation and invites the parents to ask questions and share their concerns.

[ 25 ] Complaints have now been raised that second-graders are not yet as proficient at reading as they were in elementary school, and that the block-based teaching method causes them to repeatedly lose track of what they have already covered.

[ 26 ] Dr. Steiner replies:

[ 27 ] As for reading and writing at the right time, I would like to add the following: Given today’s customs, it is certainly somewhat disheartening to see a child already in second grade who still cannot properly recite what is written on the paper in those little ghosts. But there are many experiences that teach us otherwise. After all, it is not necessary to judge life solely on the basis of very short periods of time. I have met people who, at around eighteen or nineteen, made exceptionally good and skillful use of their reading and writing skills—because, for example, they were forced to enter the workforce early; life sometimes brings that with it. I have observed people who skillfully established themselves in a profession early on, and I have met others who did so clumsily. Now, take a closer look at those who, compelled by life’s circumstances, must somehow find their way into a profession: are the skilled ones at eighteen or nineteen those who learned very early—far too early—to parrot what’s written in tiny, ghostly characters on paper, or are they those who learned it a little later? The point is, after all, that things are learned in the right way for life. And that is precisely what is carefully adhered to in our method. I would like you to realize that sometimes people simply do not observe things in the proper context of life. I have met people who had a very, very good writing style, who wrote excellent letters. One might then ask: To what do they owe this? And I must confess quite frankly that I have found that, for the most part, these were people who, in the eighth or ninth grade, were still making the most terrible mistakes. It was only in the tenth or eleventh grade that they learned to correct these mistakes. Through this process, they actually developed a very special competence. These things are complicated, and we must pay attention to how our teaching method stems from a thorough understanding of human nature. Then we’ll get used to the fact that certain things come to children at different times than we’re otherwise accustomed to. Isn’t it true that if it had always been the case that we’d established a strict rule: “It is harmful for a child to be able to read before the age of eight,” then people today wouldn’t be surprised that a child can’t read yet. Now people find it problematic. But that is precisely what you yourself just said: The Waldorf School is meant to lead toward what is right and not to compromise with what is wrong.

[ 28 ] As for what has been said about the fact that the child must once again be guided toward a subject with some effort after having drifted away from it somewhat, the point is that one should not judge the success of schooling solely based on the most immediate period of schooling. In spiritual life, something similar is necessary to what is true in natural life. One cannot always be awake; one must also sleep. And if one does not sleep, one cannot remain fully alert in the long run. If a child is educated for a few years using this teaching method—one that does not always proceed in a uniform manner, but in which things also occasionally fade from view—then you will be able to see for yourself how thoroughly the material is mastered. After a few years, you will likely form a different judgment than the one based on your immediate impression now. Of course, we are aware that we are currently misunderstood in some respects; but it may well be precisely what people now find somewhat strange—what they consider difficult for some children—that will prove its worth over the years. We must keep an eye on that.

[ 29 ] Two other questions focused on whether students at the Waldorf school can earn their high school diploma and whether homework assignments might be given after all.

[ 30 ] Dr. Steiner replied:

[ 31 ] We certainly adhere to the principle of not depriving children of the opportunity to engage with life as it is today. That is why I myself have established this guiding principle, and it is being implemented—especially in the most important areas—as well as possible: What we must do from a pedagogical and didactic standpoint must be combined with ensuring that the child is introduced to life in such a way that no external difficulties arise for him or her. For this reason, I have developed a kind of educational framework that takes both of these factors into account. We teach without regard to the educational goals set for individual grades in other schools—initially for children up to the age of nine, until they complete third grade. After all, one must have a certain degree of flexibility in order to fulfill what follows from a genuine understanding of the child’s needs and what true pedagogy must demand. Then, within this leeway, we can take into account what is currently required by various regulations and laws. So by the age of nine, we want the child to be at a level where they can transfer to any other school. Then, in turn, we allow ourselves leeway until the age of twelve so that we can practice proper pedagogy during this time. In the twelfth year, then, every child can once again transfer to another school. And so it should be again after the fifteenth year and continuing on through the Abitur. If we are fortunate enough to be able to add a new class to the school time and again and bring the children all the way to the Abitur, they will be ready by the age when they would otherwise take the Abitur to sit for this exam. Of course, it may well be that somewhere there is an examiner who says: “The young people from the Waldorf School obviously know nothing.”—One can always fail someone if one wants to; one can give the least intelligent student an excellent report card and fail the brightest ones. We cannot make provisions for such cases. But in principle, it must be permissible for us to do better in those areas where we can outperform the outside world, even though we do not place obstacles in the child’s path with regard to the external demands of life. This is, of course, merely a substitute—it would be better if we could also establish universities. That simply cannot be, so we must be content with a substitute in this area.

[ 32 ] One should never lose sight of what it truly means in terms of the art of education when children are given a task that cannot be forced upon them. It is much, much better to be sparing with mandatory homework—so that one can count on the children actually doing what they are supposed to do with enthusiasm and conviction—than to constantly assign tasks, only to find that some children do not do them after all. The most harmful thing in education is when tasks are constantly assigned that are not carried out. This demoralizes the children terribly. And these more subtle principles of education should be given special attention. — Children who want to work have plenty to do; but the school should not attempt to exert any coercion in this regard. Rather, one should strive to encourage the child to work voluntarily if one truly wants the children to work at home. There will be plenty for the child to do. But there should be no tendency to undermine the principles of a truly proper art of education by once again resorting to coercion.