The Rudolf Steiner Archive

22. The Teacher's Relationship with the Family in the Spirit of Waldorf Education

Presentation Given at the Fourth Regular General Meeting of the “Freie Waldorfschule” Association

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! From the perspectives on which the Waldorf School is based, there is not just one but many paths leading from something that is today unnaturally imposed on humanity—and especially on social life—to something natural, to something that is, so to speak, demanded by human nature in its broadest sense. And it is such a path that I would like to outline in the remarks I have taken the liberty of sending in advance to today’s gathering—the path from the teacher to the parental home.

[ 2 ] One might say that this path is actually a natural one. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, the path that teachers and educators must take to the parental home has not only been—and is not only at times—quite difficult to find, but there are also very, very significant pedagogical views that take no account of this path to the parental home. I need only recall something that was experienced as one of the greatest events in the course of German intellectual development: Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s influence in every field. But today we want to speak only of his influence in the field of education. Indeed, during one of the most difficult periods in German history, he delivered his “Addresses to the German Nation”—these powerful addresses to the German people—in which he emphasized how a recovery, a revival of German life, must come about through education following the severe humiliation of 1806. And one can say: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of the noblest Germans, found the most beautiful words—and also the most significant words—on the subject of education. Yet he regarded it as a fundamental requirement for the realization of his pedagogical intentions that children be removed from their parents’ homes, that they be, so to speak, crammed together in special educational institutions run solely by a fully centralized state according to rigid principles. But we have also subsequently witnessed the most diverse educational experiments in which children in special circumstances are to be placed in special locations in order to receive a proper education. And we have, in particular, numerous examples throughout the course of human development where such a removal of children from their parents’ home is deemed necessary.

[ 3 ] Although Waldorf education, with its spirit, believes it works at least as powerfully and just as deeply from the depths of the human soul as those educational approaches characterized by a few broad strokes, this spirit of Waldorf education took a completely different direction from the very beginning. This spirit of Waldorf education did not stem from external factors. It did not say that one should bring about this or that in the children’s social lives. It did not say that children should be placed in this or that situation, torn away from their usual circumstances; rather, the spirit of Waldorf education was, from the very beginning, a purely methodological, a purely pedagogical-didactic one. The social situation, the circumstances of life, are accepted just as they are. And everything that is to be achieved through Waldorf education is pursued for inner, spiritual reasons inherent in the pedagogy itself. So that one might say, for example: If, due to the social situation in which the child finds itself, or due to other preconditions, there are difficulties in education, these are accepted by the spirit of Waldorf education as a matter of fate, and the methodology and didactics are arranged in such a way that the difficulties are overcome through the spirit and the practice of education and instruction—and in a manner that is as individualized as possible, tailored to the individual child. As a result, an institution such as the Waldorf school stands right in the midst of social life as it is. And in this social life, it is simply the case that when one deals with a school that admits children at the current compulsory school age—that is, at six or seven years old—the child is received from the parental home; and since we do not have a boarding school, the child remains in the parental home and under the parents’ care during the time outside of school hours. Thus, from the very beginning, the entire direction that education and instruction in the Waldorf School must take is oriented toward cooperation with the family—which, as we shall see, must consist in particular of a shared sense of feeling, empathy, and thinking in harmony with the family as well. |

[ 4 ] I am sure that many of you are already familiar with the concept of the stages of a child’s development, which has been discussed on numerous occasions. There are, in particular, two or three of these stages that are of concern to our educational approach. The first begins at birth and ends with the loss of baby teeth; the second begins with the loss of baby teeth and ends with sexual maturity; the third extends beyond that, roughly until the age of twenty-one. Each of these stages of a child’s life shows us—so to speak, if we only approach things with an open mind as they truly are—the child in a completely different state of mind and also in a different physical condition. But let us first consider the state of mind.

[ 5 ] Until a child’s teeth begin to fall out, the child is entirely dependent on imitation to acquire everything it learns in the educational process. Whatever is demonstrated to the child acts upon it as an external stimulus that immediately prompts the entire physical organism—more visibly in some areas, less visibly in others—to imitate the impression. To confirm this, we need only consider the significant fact that a child acquires their native language entirely through imitation. Here, imitation penetrates deeply into the human physical and psychological constitution. It must be taken into account that any sound that is spoken is perceived by the child—in its vibration, in its wave motion—much more intensely than is the case later in life. And every adjustment of the larynx, every inner animation of the organs, is itself based on imitation when it comes to language—specifically, the mother tongue—and this holds true for everything in the child’s life up until the change of teeth.

[ 6 ] Today, when a misunderstanding—or numerous misunderstandings—has led to major errors in our otherwise admirable scientific worldview, there is much talk that this or that aspect of what a child acquires in the first stage of life, up until the change of teeth, is based on heredity. So much—so very much—is thrown into this field of heredity today. As far as the child is concerned, this talk of heredity is based solely on the fact that those who speak of it lack a proper sense of observation. Otherwise, they would discover that, fundamentally, much of what is today attributed to obscure, mystical heredity must actually be sought in the clearly comprehensible imitation toward which the child is oriented.

[ 7 ] But let us consider how closely the spiritual life—which stands out from this entire life of imitation—is intertwined with the parents’ life, precisely because the child is an imitative being. Precisely when one truly understands how strong the child’s inclination to imitate is, one develops, in the most profound sense, the holiest reverence and the deepest appreciation for the bond between the child and the parents. And if one looks, in the spirit of anthroposophical Spiritual Science, at what underlies all of this in the spiritual realms, then one says to oneself all the more: Since the human being is a spiritual being before entering physical existence, and despite being a free being, the human being enters earthly life with a very specific destiny for the most diverse forms of life—I do not say “tasks,” but “forms.” If, on the one hand, one observes how this destiny unfolds with an inner regularity from the child’s often most trivial experiences all the way through to maturity, indeed into old age, and on the other hand, if one observes how the child grows together with the parents by virtue of being an imitative being—if one truly views this within all its underlying spiritual contexts—then one develops feelings that, one might well say, have a religious character toward what one has given to the child when, as a teacher or educator, one receives the child for upbringing and instruction. And it is precisely through these almost religious feelings that one develops a strong inclination to understand very precisely: how is the child, who is entrusted to us at school age, connected to the parental home?

[ 8 ] Here one may say the following: It is truly not theoretical pedagogical considerations, nor are they abstract, principled guidelines, that are meant to chart the course for the spirit of Waldorf education toward the children’s parents; rather, it is something living—just as everything in the Waldorf school is meant to be something living. It is something living; it is the living need of the Waldorf school teacher not only to have the child in mind, but to find the path from the child to the parents through every expression of the soul that the child offers, every character-based driving force, every impulsiveness active in a childlike way—indeed, every facial expression, every gesture, every movement of the hand. As a Waldorf school teacher, one becomes grounded in the understanding of the child, and this is what is needed above all else if one wishes to educate the child in such a way that the impulses for their education are drawn from their own nature. Above all, one becomes firmly grounded in the ability to view the child in the right way when one can look to the parents standing behind the child. And this is not only true when there is an absolutely harmonious relationship between the child and the parents. After all, life reveals in the most diverse ways what emerges from the child’s life with its parents. Certainly, we look upon a child’s fate with a sense of inner joy and deep inner satisfaction when the child has the opportunity to live in a completely harmonious relationship with exemplary parents. But might we not also pose a counterquestion? Does not anyone who views life—present life, historical life—with an unbiased eye, does not such a person see how the greatest minds—not only the geniuses of intellect, but also the geniuses of virtue and moral action—have often emerged from severe disharmony between child and parents? The Waldorf teacher must accustom himself not to criticize the relationship between the child and the parental home, but to accept it objectively, because he sees, as it were, a light emanating from his acquaintance with the parents that illuminates the child’s unique characteristics.

[ 9 ] It is not, therefore, a rule or some pedagogical principle that prompts the Waldorf teacher to reach out to parents, but rather the deepest need of the heart—just as Waldorf pedagogy, in its very essence, is a pedagogy of the heart.

[ 10 ] Let us now turn our attention to something else. Let us consider how the teacher must now take on a portion of what used to be the sole responsibility of the parents for children of compulsory elementary school age. When a child enters elementary school, they are in the process of losing their baby teeth. Children are sent to school a little too early these days; the true elementary school age actually begins only with the loss of baby teeth, but that is of lesser importance. When the child is sent to school and entrusted to the teacher, the teacher must take on a part of the child’s upbringing; this task, however, takes on a special character because the child’s entire inner life—its entire emotional and mental constitution—also undergoes a transformation with the change of teeth. From then on, the child is no longer a being who merely imitates, although the principle of imitation continues for a few more years during elementary school. But essentially, the child is no longer an imitative being; rather, it is a being that is now stimulated—so to speak, inspired—by what comes to meet it in the form of, I might say, an appropriate artistic rendering of what we wish to present to the child. The child is no longer inclined to devote its entire being to imitating what is presented to it, but rather the child transitions to the natural principle of authority. Whereas previously it was the will that, throughout the child’s entire being, followed what was modeled by imitating it, now it is the feeling that finds pleasure or displeasure in what the teacher presents to the child—not only in the image, but also in the image of the teacher’s entire personality, his or her own actions, the manner of his or her speech, and so on. And it is not an arbitrarily imposed authority, but rather a natural authority that must prevail in school between the change of teeth and sexual maturity.

[ 11 ] Anyone who does not admit this is simply unable to turn their gaze toward the unfolding of the whole of human life. It is so easy to say that everything must be visual instruction. Certainly, there is nothing to be said against visual instruction, but visual instruction should not be a means of trivializing all education and all teaching. One cannot adopt the principle of reducing everything to the level at which the child already stands. The aim can only be to clothe that which the child immediately demands through direct perception in vivid mental images. But take, for example, the realm of religious and moral life; how is one to teach that through visual instruction? But setting that aside, the child, through the inner essence of its soul, demands that something be true for it simply because the educator—whose authority is taken for granted and whom the child finds sympathetic—declares it to be true. The child feels that something is beautiful because the authority it takes for granted finds it beautiful; the child finds that something is good because the authority finds it good. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good are embodied in this authority. And it is detrimental for a person to be expected to acquire a sense of the True, the Good, Beautiful—based on principles, abstract commandments, or all manner of intellectual laws—before having acquired it at the proper age of childhood—which is the period between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity—by having encountered it embodied in another human being. We should first have learned that something is true because a revered figure calls it true, before we grasp the inner, abstract lawfulness of the true, which can actually only take effect on us once we have passed the age of sexual maturity.

[ 12 ] You surely would not expect me to believe that the man who wrote his *Philosophy of Freedom* more than thirty years ago would want to take up the cudgels for the principle of authority where it does not belong. But the principle of authority, as demanded by childlike nature itself, absolutely belongs in elementary school. There, the teacher—with his intellect, his heart, his feelings, and his entire humanity—serves as a guide to what is true, good, and beautiful, and how the child should receive it; a human relationship develops that extends into the very shaping of the true, the good, and the beautiful. All of this is, of course, explained in greater detail in the various pedagogical writings in which one can read about Waldorf education.

[ 13 ] But now consider the situation in which the Waldorf school teacher finds himself by recognizing this self-evident principle of authority and seeking to apply it to its fullest extent. He is dependent on this self-evident authority not being undermined in any way. Now one must bear in mind that even in those families where there is disharmony between the child and the parents, there is nevertheless, precisely at the age when the child’s baby teeth are being replaced, a deep bond between the child and the parents. A bond so strong that it essentially overshadows everything else that is relevant to the child’s being at this stage of life. Thus, even if the child—perhaps due to circumstances, to use the serious term—harbors antipathy toward the parents, there remains in the subconscious a relationship of authority toward the parents that is, at first, entirely unshakable. I can only mention this here, but the matter can be proven in every detail. True psychology, a true science of the soul, teaches that even when children, during the age of tooth replacement and in the years that follow, consciously develop in opposition to their parents’ home, they remain entirely under their parents’ authority in the finer, yet unconscious, spiritual veins of their being. Who would wish it to be otherwise? This is simply the natural relationship. If I were to describe the course that human development would take if this were not the case, we would be presented with a truly gruesome picture of that development.

[ 14 ] But this means that the teacher, in the entirely different realm in which he wishes to work, must now present—not as a role model, but as a spokesperson, as one who asserts his authority—that which penetrates the child, just as the teacher, I would say, must approach—with a more subtle form of influence—that which the family home has instilled in the child down to the very core of its being. One cannot stand in authority before the child’s individuality in any other way than by consciously building upon what the child has become through the parental home. This, in turn, instinctively gives rise to the deepest urge in the Waldorf teacher to establish a relationship with the parents.

[ 15 ] And this urge arises for a very specific reason. The spirit of Waldorf education is not one-sided; it encompasses the spirit, the soul, and likewise the physical aspect. It would be a complete misunderstanding of the spirit of Waldorf education to believe that the physical aspect—in both its healthy and diseased states—is in any way undervalued in relation to the spiritual. The spirit of Waldorf education takes the whole human being in the child into account. Since it takes the whole human being into account but does not have the whole human being—having the child only during school hours and perhaps for a little while afterward—it must have an inner need to be in the closest possible contact with the parental home, which the child inhabits during the rest of the time.

[ 16 ] Truly, in our experience, what I have often said—especially within the Waldorf school community itself—is true: the teacher need not fear classes with a large number of students. Establishing small classes for pedagogical reasons implies a pedagogical weakness. That is not the issue. If it might be desirable in a Waldorf school to strive for smaller classes, it is for the reason that the teacher should have the opportunity to find the path to the parents’ home for all of his or her students. And he or she must find it! He or she must find it out of the very spirit of the Waldorf school!

[ 17 ] But let’s consider something else. I’d like to highlight just a few stages. Anyone who observes a child’s development will notice an extraordinarily important turning point in life, roughly between the ages of nine and ten. You can see it approaching. A certain inner crisis makes itself felt at this point. It is not as if the child were asking particularly intellectual questions, but the crisis is indicated by the fact that children who are usually lively become listless, quiet children become loud, and the children exhibit all sorts of pathological symptoms, and so on. What is happening here is that in the child’s subconscious—for an infinite amount of the child’s being resides in the subconscious, not in consciousness—a question arises, one that is not formulated intellectually but lives only in feeling: Until now, the self-evident authority has told me what was true, good, and beautiful; this self-evident authority is the embodiment of truth, goodness, and beauty; but is it really so? The doubt need not even be voiced, but it is there. There it is, and it intervenes in the child’s life in the manner described.

[ 18 ] The point is that, precisely at this stage of life—for which one must possess a healthy, free capacity for observation—one must also find the right words and the right behavior. A variety of approaches is necessary. Tact, instinct, and intuition must be present. Then, at this particular stage in the child’s life, one can do something that will have immense, far-reaching significance for the child’s entire future life on earth. If one finds the remarks, the actions, and the approach through which one makes the child understand, in its own way: “Yes, you are right to see in me the natural authority”—then one has become a true benefactor of the child, acting from the depths of one’s soul.

[ 19 ] For blessed is the person who, having moved beyond this stage of life—around the age of nine or ten—looks up with reverence to a natural authority! No one can become a free being in life unless they have first learned, before reaching sexual maturity, to conduct their life in the manner of a highly esteemed person. To submit oneself in this way out of an inner, instinctive freedom; to place oneself in the presence of such a person; to say to oneself: “It is right to do what he does”—this is what truly brings to fruition the potential for freedom that every person harbors within themselves.

[ 20 ] In short, as Waldorf school teachers, we must uphold our natural authority in every respect and in the most intimate way. How can we uphold it? By fostering in parents, through our interactions with them, the feeling that: We may influence our children in such a way that they see this natural authority in the teacher, in the educator. It may sound trivial, but it is true: The Waldorf school teacher must not shy away from revealing his or her true nature to the child’s parents—this can sometimes be done in as little as five minutes—so that the parents know who they are dealing with. And in the tone of their voice, in the nuance of every sentence spoken about the school, they should point to the natural authority of the school. The bond between the school and the home cannot be forged closely enough.

[ 21 ] And a third point. If you have one, two, three, or four curricula and school regulations—all carefully thought out—in front of you, you know exactly what you have to do. You have the curriculum, you have the school regulations, and you must follow them. But that’s not how the Waldorf school operates. In the spirit of the Waldorf school, it is quite right to think that some things must be different from what they are in public education. Many people today simply cannot see that. And in our age, there is so much cleverness around. One cannot emphasize strongly enough how much more clever people are in our age compared to other ages. It’s just that this intellectual cleverness—and I mean this quite seriously, I’m not being ironic—this cleverness of today is precisely what leads to the greatest follies. But still, people are clever. This expresses itself in all sorts of ways. Today, thirty people can get together and devise a school reform. It can seem so clever, so indisputable. Someone with a layman’s perspective might then say: “But that’s brilliant—you couldn’t possibly create better schools than those based on points 1, 2, 3, and 4.” But just try going a step further and taking a look at the schools that are created based on points 1, 2, 3, and 4. The principles and regulations are very clever; but in real life, they’re of no practical use. Only those who feel the pulse of life itself and can create from that pulsating life can make something of it.

[ 22 ] This is the situation facing the Waldorf school teacher: he has no set rules, only guidelines—guidelines that he must shape according to his own individuality. After all, everyone is a different person. And if one prescribes, in a strict manner, what the teacher must do in school, then everyone is supposed to be just like everyone else. Just consider the consequences this would have. If this were taken seriously—if the regulations were strictly enforced, if the well-intentioned but abstract pedagogical principles were implemented, according to which people believe there is only one way to educate and teach—then one could no longer distinguish one teacher from another. Then one would meet one teacher and say it was another, because he educates and teaches entirely according to the same abstract principles. But the teacher is a human being. The teacher is an individual. And he can only be effective if he can engage as a human being with the full independence of his being. Only then can he truly be effective. But then he must know life. One can only have an impact on life if one allows life to have an impact on oneself. But what kind of life is there in school? The continuation of the parents’ life in the child. Through the paragraphs and principles, the teacher is directed toward everything that constitutes the child’s immediate life. This must be incorporated into methodology, into the conduct of the entire process of teaching and education.

[ 23 ] Therefore, my esteemed audience, if you were a little mouse and sometimes listened in on our faculty meetings, you would hear how every detail is actually addressed there, and how intimately we sometimes discuss what comes from the home and influences the child. Furthermore, if you were such a little mouse and were listening, you would learn how these teachers’ conferences are a process of continuous learning, a continuous development of pedagogy toward ever higher and more intimate effects. It cannot be any other way if the school is to be a living organism rather than a dead one. And so the Waldorf School, precisely because it calls itself a free school, is an institution that, through its innermost essence, points the way to the family home with regard to the child’s entire being.

[ 24 ] You meet a child. Let’s say the child has limited intellectual abilities. That does happen. Yes, limited intellectual abilities can be improved in a wide variety of ways and developed for the better. But you need some points of reference. Let’s say you get to know the father or the mother; they are very intelligent. It does happen, after all, that intellectually ungifted children have very intelligent parents. The opposite can also be true: intellectually ungifted parents may have very intellectually gifted children. But in any case, one will learn an immense amount about how to remedy deficiencies in intellectual abilities by observing the parents, whom the child has imitated until the time of losing their baby teeth. Through this, one will not only find a theoretical explanation but also a guide for handling what needs to be done. - And the emotional life—which still spills over into moral life, which derives goodness solely from sympathy with the goodness in the teacher, the emotional life that plays the most significant role precisely during the school-age years—how does this emotional life become clear when we look through the child’s feelings to the parents’ particular way of experiencing emotion! The same is true of the life of the will.

[ 25 ] Anyone who, out of their own cleverness, knows that a person must be this way or that way because that is the correct, average human nature, certainly does not need to look to the parents. But whoever knows that things arise from their origin and beings from their origin—who looks not at an abstraction but at the origin—must look to the parental home.

[ 26 ] Because Waldorf education seeks to breathe the spirit of reality, the spirit of what is in harmony with nature, and the spirit of what is in harmony with the soul, it leads us on the path of reality. And this path of reality leads back from the school to the family home. That is why everything is done to foster mutual interest—between teachers and parents, and between parents and the school’s teachers. The parent-teacher conferences held by the Waldorf school are intended to forge a bond between the school and the home. And the activities conducted at these conferences are designed to allow parents to see, specifically, what kind of mindset and state of mind the teaching staff possesses.

[ 27 ] That, my esteemed colleagues, is the practical implementation of what is, after all, the supreme—I cannot say “principle,” but rather the supreme vision—at the heart of Waldorf education. From the depths of their innermost being, teachers must say to themselves, in the spirit of Waldorf education: Parents entrust to the school the most precious thing they have—their child. Parents have experienced many things in life. Because they themselves may have faced trials in life, they do not want their child to remain untested, but they do want the child to be spared some of the harsh experiences they themselves have had to endure. For this and many other reasons, countless, boundless hopes from the family home are tied to the moment when the child is entrusted to the school. In keeping with the entire spirit of Waldorf education, the teacher, the educator, knows what is being entrusted to him. And based on the perspectives I have described, he wishes to influence the child in such a way that, when he releases the child from school and the parents must make a new decision and receive the child back from the teacher’s care, he might hear the parents say: “We always knew, when we looked at the school, that our hopes were bound to be fulfilled.”—But this judgment cannot form at the last moment during the graduation exam; it can only form as it matures through the school’s interaction with the parents’ home.

[ 28 ] And so one can look beyond various educational experiments—and even ideals that were intended to be pedagogically magnificent—and turn one’s gaze toward the spirit of Waldorf education, saying to oneself: It is, after all, an immensely healthy instinct that finds its expression in the child’s relationship with the parents; it must therefore also be healthy for the school to grow into this relationship by finding a way to reach out to the parents.

[ 29 ] Among the many things that the Waldorf School strives for—all of which can be characterized by the statement: “The Waldorf School seeks to move beyond abstract principles and clever ideas toward a reality full of life”—the most important of these is that the Waldorf School seeks to find the path to the most life-filled reality in the child’s existence. And this reality in the existence of the young child, the school-age child, is the parents.

[ 30 ] Because this school, in keeping with its spirit, seeks to be a school not of theory, not of abstraction, not of rigid, theoretical principles, but of full life and full reality, it seeks a path into the reality of the family home.