The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A Meditative Approach to the Study of Man I

[ 1 ] My dear friends, my intention was, during these days that I am able to spend here, to provide you with a sort of supplement to some of what I presented in the introductory pedagogical courses last year. However, there are so few days left, and from what I have just heard, there are so many obligations for the coming days that it is hardly possible to speak of any set program; in fact, I can hardly say whether we will get beyond these few introductory words today.

[ 2 ] What I would like to discuss today in this introduction is this: I would like to add a few thoughts to last year’s remarks regarding the teacher and the educator themselves. Of course, what I am about to say regarding the essence of the teacher is meant to be quite aphoristic, and is actually intended to gradually take shape within you yourselves, so that it may, as it were, be further processed through your own thinking and feeling. It is precisely to the teaching profession that this must be brought to their attention—and in doing so, we stand on the ground of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and seek, from this foundation, to shape the pedagogy necessary for our time— it is above all necessary to draw attention to the fact that the teacher should really have a sense, a feeling for what the essence of the esoteric is as such. In our present age, the age of democracy, the age of journalism, things stand in such a way that people have hardly any real, true sense of what is actually meant by “esotericism”; for people today think that what is true is true, and what is right is right, and that the true and the right, once formulated in any way, must then be able to be expressed to the whole world in the form in which one thinks it has been correctly formulated. Now, in real life it is not like that; in real life, things are quite different. In real life, the reality of everything is that one can only bring certain effects to bear if one guards the impulses for these effects, as it were, as a most sacred secret within the soul. And teachers, in particular, need to guard many things as a sacred secret and regard them as playing a role only in those discussions and debates that take place within the teaching profession itself. At first glance, such a statement does not seem particularly understandable, and yet—it will become clear to you. I would have to say a great deal if I wanted to make it understandable, but for now it will become clear to you when I tell you the following.

[ 3 ] This sentence, which I just quoted, also has far-reaching significance for global civilization today. When we think about the education of young people today, we must always keep in mind that we are working on the feelings, the ideas, and the impulses of the will of the next generation; we must be clear that we have to prepare this next generation, starting from the present, for specific tasks that are destined to be carried out in humanity’s future. Now, when one presents such a view, the question immediately arises: What is the actual reason that humanity has fallen into that widespread misery in which it finds itself today? — Humanity has fallen into this misery because it has essentially made itself dependent—thoroughly dependent—on the particular way Westerners think and feel. And one can say: If, for example, someone in Central Europe today speaks of Fichte, Herder, or even Goethe, then—if that person is part of public life, whether as a journalist, a popular author, or the like—he is, in essence, usually much further removed from what constitutes a genuine spiritual impulse in Fichte, Herder, or Goethe—than they are—when thinking and acting in Berlin or Vienna—from what is felt and thought today in London, Paris, New York, or Chicago. Gradually, things have turned out in such a way that, through the worldview impulses of the Western peoples, our entire civilization has, in essence, been flooded, and our entire public life is steeped in the worldview impulses of these Western peoples. And it must be said that this is particularly true in the art of education; for, essentially, since the last third of the 19th century, the Central European peoples have been learning from the Western peoples in all such matters. Today, it seems entirely natural to people who discuss educational issues, among other things, to operate within the modes of thought that originate from there. If you wish to trace the origins of everything that is considered reasonable today in Central Europe with regard to pedagogy, you can find it, for example, in the views of Herbert Spencer or similar thinkers. One does not trace the numerous paths by which views such as those of Spencer or similar thinkers found their way into the minds of those who set the intellectual agenda in Central Europe. But these paths do exist; they are there. And if one takes the spirit—I do not wish to place particular emphasis on the details—the spirit of such a pedagogical approach as is found, for example, in Fichte; if one takes this spirit, it is not only entirely different today from what is generally regarded as rational pedagogy, but the fact is that people today are scarcely capable of directing their souls toward such ways of thinking and feeling, so that what Fichte or Herder intended could truly be understood in such a way that it might find a continuation. Thus, in the field of pedagogy today—specifically, the art of pedagogy—we find that the very opposite of what ought to be has become the guiding principle. I would like to draw your attention to a commentary by Spencer.

[ 4 ] Spencer believes that hands-on instruction should be conducted in such a way that it transitions into the investigations of the naturalist and the research of the scientist. So what should be done in school? We should therefore teach children in school in such a way that, when they grow up and have the opportunity to continue what they have learned from us in school about minerals, plants, animals, and so on, they might become true naturalists or philosophers. Certainly, such ideas are often contested today, but in practice, people still behave exactly as has just been described. People act this way simply because our textbooks are written accordingly, and because no one thinks to change, rewrite, or abolish them. For the situation today is such that, for example, textbooks on botany are written more for a future botanist than for a person in general; and likewise, textbooks on zoology are written for a future zoologist, not for a person in general.

[ 5 ] Now, the peculiar thing is that we should be striving for the exact opposite of what Spencer presents as a true pedagogical principle. We can hardly imagine a greater mistake in elementary school education than to educate children in a way that treats the subject matter—for example, with regard to plants and animals—in such a manner that the child might later become a botanist or a zoologist. On the contrary, if one could structure instruction in such a way as to present facts about plants and animals in a manner that prevented children from becoming botanists or zoologists, one would have achieved a more accurate approach than by following Spencer’s principle. For no one should become a botanist or zoologist because of what they learn in elementary school; a person should become a botanist or zoologist solely through their particular aptitude, which simply manifests itself in the selection that must result from the proper art of education within the course of life. Through their aptitude! That is to say, if they have an aptitude for botany, they can become a botanist; and if they have an aptitude for zoology, they can become a zoologist. This must also arise from the individual’s aptitude—that is, from predestined karma, from the law of destiny. It must happen in such a way that we recognize: in this person lies a botanist, in that person lies a zoologist. It must never happen in such a way that elementary school instruction serves as any kind of preparation for this specific scientific pursuit. But consider what has happened recently: Unfortunately, our scientists have taken over the field of education. People who have become thoroughly accustomed to thinking scientifically have taken charge of pedagogy and have had a major say in its most important aspects. This means there was a prevailing view that the teacher, as such, had something in common with the scientist; scientific education was even taken as the basis for teacher training, whereas the two must be thoroughly distinct. If a teacher becomes a scientist—that is, if he turns to thinking scientifically in the narrower sense (he may do so as a private individual, but he cannot do so as a teacher)—then something happens to him, quite rightly, that occurs very frequently: the teacher becomes something of a comic figure in his classroom, among his students, or among his colleagues, and jokes are made at his expense. Goethe’s “Baccalaureus” in upper secondary school is, after all, not as rare as is commonly believed.

[ 6 ] And when all is said and done, if one asks oneself today: Should one side more with the teacher when students make fun of him, or more with the students? — then, given current educational conditions, one would be inclined to side more with the students. For what everything has ultimately come down to is best illustrated by our universities. What are our universities, really? Are they institutions of learning for mature young people, or are they research institutions? They want to be both, and it is precisely because of this that they have become the caricatures they are today. And people usually even highlight the fact that they are both educational institutions and research institutes as a particular advantage of our universities. But it is precisely because of this that all the nonsense that afflicts pedagogy when it is carried out by scientists first finds its way into these highest institutions of learning. And then this nonsense spreads all the way down to the middle schools and ultimately into the elementary schools as well. This is something that cannot be emphasized enough: that the art of education must spring from life, and cannot spring from abstract scientific thinking.

[ 7 ] What is peculiar here is that Western education has, first and foremost, produced precisely what one might call a scientifically—even natural-scientifically—oriented pedagogy, and that, if we recall what was present in Herder, Fichte, Jean Paul, Schiller, and similar thinkers, we see that all of this is actually a forgotten “pedagogy of life”—a pedagogy drawn directly from life itself.

[ 8 ] Now, the Central European peoples have a world-historical calling to cultivate this pedagogy—to cultivate it, so to speak, as their esoteric undertaking. For much will be able to become—and must become—common to all of humanity if social improvement is to come about in the future. But what emerges specifically from the entire concrete Central European intellectual tradition with regard to the art of education—that is something the Western peoples will not be able to understand; on the contrary, it will annoy them. One can only explain it to them once they resolve to stand on the esoteric ground of spiritual science. With regard to all those things that have been regarded with such pride within Germany over the past 40 years—with regard to all these things for which such a great upswing has been proclaimed in Germany—Germany is lost. This will lead to the dominance of the Western peoples. There is nothing to be done about it, and we can only hope to generate enough understanding for the threefold social order that the Western peoples will embrace this understanding.

[ 9 ] But with regard to what the art of education has to offer, we in Central Europe have something to give the world that no one else can give it—neither an Eastern nor a Western person. But we must understand how to keep this within those circles that are capable of appreciating it; we must understand how to safeguard it there with a certain degree of confidence, and we must know that this safeguarding is precisely what brings about the desired effect. One must know exactly which matters to keep silent about in the presence of certain people if one wishes to achieve an effect. But above all, we must be clear that we must not pin our hopes on any influence from that way of thinking which, originating in the West, is virtually indispensable to certain branches of modern civilization. We must know that we have nothing at all to hope for from that quarter with regard to what we are called upon to cultivate as the art of education.

[ 10 ] There is a treatise by Herbert Spencer on education. This treatise is extraordinarily interesting. In it, Spencer compiles a whole series of fundamental principles—or “principles,” as he calls them—regarding the intellectual education of human beings. Among these principles, he advocates one in particular with great emphasis: one should never begin instruction with the abstract, but always with the concrete; one should always work out the details from the individual case. Now he writes his book on education. There, before anything concrete is addressed, one finds the worst kind of abstract tangle—truly nothing but abstract nonsense—and the man fails to notice that while he is expounding principles he considers indispensable, he himself is following the exact opposite of those very principles. We thus have an example of a great, influential contemporary philosopher who is in complete contradiction with what he directly presents.

[ 11 ] Now, as you saw last year, our pedagogy must not be based on abstract educational principles—on this or that idea that might be put forward, such as: one should not impose anything on the child from the outside, but rather one should develop the child’s individuality, and so on. You know that our art of education must be based on a genuine empathy with the child’s nature, that it must be based, in the broadest sense, on an understanding of the developing human being. And we have, after all, gathered ample insight into the nature of the developing human being during the first course and later at the teachers’ conferences. If we, as teachers, can open ourselves to this nature of the developing human being, then the way we should proceed will naturally spring forth from our understanding of this nature. In this regard, we as teachers must become artists. Just as it is utterly impossible for an artist to pick up a book on aesthetics in order to paint or sculpt according to the principles of an aesthetician, so too should it be utterly impossible for a teacher to use one of those pedagogical manuals to teach. What the teacher does need, however, is a genuine understanding of what a human being actually is; what he becomes as he develops through childhood. Above all, it is necessary that we be clear about this: We teach—let us say, initially in first grade—children aged six to seven. Well, our teaching will always be poor and will always have failed to fulfill its purpose if, after having worked with this first-grade class for about a year, we do not say to ourselves at the end of that first year: Who has actually learned the most here? It is I, the teacher! — If we can say to ourselves, for example: “At the beginning of the school year, I had great pedagogical principles; I followed the best masters of pedagogy; I did everything to put these pedagogical principles into practice”—and if one had truly done that, then one would certainly have taught poorly. But you would certainly have taught the very best if you had gone into the classroom every morning with trepidation and hesitation, not relying very much on yourself at all, only to say to yourself at the end of the year: “You yourself have actually learned the most during this time.” For the ability to say to yourself, “You yourself have learned the most”—that depends on how you went about it. It depends on what one has actually done; it depends on having constantly felt: “You grow by helping the children grow.” You try—in the noblest sense of the word—even though you can’t actually do very much; but a certain strength grows within you as you work together with the children. — One will sometimes feel: “There’s not much to be done with this or that type of child”; but you will have made an effort with them. You will have learned this or that from other children through their special gifts. In short, you emerge from the campaign as a completely different person than you were when you went in. And you have learned what you could not do a year ago, when you first began teaching. At the end of the school year, you’ll say to yourself: “Yes, now you can actually do what you should have been doing all along!” That’s a very real feeling. And there lies a certain mystery. If, at the beginning of the school year, you had truly been able to do everything you can now at the end of the year, you would have taught poorly. You taught well precisely because you had to work to master it first! So consider this paradox: you taught well precisely because you didn’t know what you’ve learned by the end of the year, and it would have been detrimental if you’d already known at the beginning of the year what you’ve learned by the end of the year. A strange paradox!

[ 12 ] It is important for many people to know this; but it is most important for teachers to know this. For this is a specific instance of a general truth and insight: knowledge as such—regardless of what it pertains to—knowledge that can be expressed in abstract principles, that can be internally visualized as ideas—such knowledge cannot have any practical value. Practical value lies only in that which leads to this knowledge, in that which is on the path to this knowledge. For this knowledge—which we acquire in the way we possess it after having taught for a year—only acquires its value after a person’s death. This knowledge only enters into a reality after a person’s death such that it can then further educate people, that it can further educate each individual person. In life, it is not the finished knowledge that has value, but the work that leads to that finished knowledge; and especially in the art of education, this work has its own very special value. It is actually just like that in the arts. I do not believe that anyone is a truly right-minded artist who, upon completing a work, does not say to himself: “Now you could actually do it.” I do not believe that anyone is a truly right-minded artist who is satisfied with any work he has created. He may have a certain natural, self-serving reverence for what he has created, but he cannot actually be satisfied with it. A work of art, once completed, actually loses a great deal of its interest even for the person who created it. This loss of interest stems from the peculiar nature of the knowledge we acquire in the process of creating something; and, on the other hand, the very vitality, the life-springing quality, lies in the fact that it has not yet been transformed into knowledge.

[ 13 ] After all, this is also true of the entire human organism. Our head is as fully developed as anything can be, for it is shaped by the forces of our previous earthly life; it is overripe. All human heads are, after all, overripe—even the immature ones. But the rest of our organism is such that it first yields the seed for the head of our next earthly life; it is sprouting and budding, but it is something unfinished. The rest of our organism is something that does not actually reveal its true form until our death—namely, the form of the forces at work within it. And the fact that there is precisely this surging life within the rest of our organism is evident from its constitution: ossification is limited to a minimum in this remaining part of the organism, whereas in relation to the head, it is pushed to a maximum.

[ 14 ] This unique kind of innermost humility, this sense of one’s own becoming—that is something the teacher must embody; for more comes from this feeling than from any abstract principles. If we stand in our classroom with the awareness that it is good that we do everything imperfectly—for that is what brings it to life—then we will teach well. If, on the other hand, we stand in the classroom constantly licking our fingers with satisfaction at our own pedagogical perfection, then we will most certainly teach poorly.

[ 15 ] Now imagine that you first teach first grade, then second grade, third grade, and so on, so that you have actually gone through everything there is to go through in terms of excitement, disappointment, and—for my sake—success as well. Imagine that you have worked your way up through all the grades of elementary school; at the end of each year, you spoke to yourself in the kind of mood I have just described, and now you’re moving back down—let’s say from the 8th grade to the 1st grade. Yes, now, one might think, you have to say to yourself: “Yes, but now I’ll start putting what I’ve learned into practice; now I’ll be able to do it right; now I’ll be an excellent teacher!” But that’s not how it will be. Experience will reveal something entirely different to you. At the end of the second, the third, and every subsequent school year, you’ll say roughly the same thing to yourself, out of the right frame of mind: I have now learned about seven-, eight-, and nine-year-old children what I could only learn by working with them; at the end of each school year, I know how I should have done it. — But when you reach the fourth or fifth school year again, you will once more not know how you actually should have done it. For now you will be correcting what you intended after having taught for a year. And so, after you have finished the eighth school year and corrected everything again, and are truly fortunate enough to start over in the first school year, you will find yourself in the same situation. Admittedly, you will be teaching with a different spirit. But if you go through your teaching career with an inner, true, noble skepticism—not the frivolous skepticism I spoke of—then you will draw from that skepticism a new, imponderable force that will particularly enable you to achieve more with the children entrusted to you. That is undoubtedly true. But the effect in life will actually just be different—not necessarily better, but different. I would say that the quality of what you make of the children will not be much better now than it was the first time; the effect will simply be different. You will achieve something qualitatively different, not so much more in quantitative terms. You will achieve something qualitatively different, and that is essentially enough. For everything we acquire in the manner described—with the necessary noble skepticism and inner humility—boils down to this: we shape people into individuals, individuals on a grand scale. We cannot have the same class twice and send out into the world the same copies of the pedagogical template twice! But we can present to the world individuals who are each uniquely shaped. We bring about diversity in life; but this does not rest on the elaboration of abstract principles—rather, this diversity in life actually rests on a certain deeper understanding of life, as we have now described.

[ 16 ] As you can see, what matters most for a teacher is the attitude he or she brings to this sacred profession. This is not without significance; for the most important elements in teaching and education are, after all, the intangibles. A teacher who enters the classroom with such a mindset achieves different results than others. Just as in everyday life it is not always the physically grand that is decisive, but sometimes precisely the small things, so too it is not always what we do with grand words that is decisive, but sometimes it is that sensation, that feeling, which we have cultivated within ourselves before entering the classroom. But one thing in particular is of great importance: that we quickly shed our more immediate personal selves—like a snake shedding its skin—when we enter the classroom. After all, since the teacher is, as people sometimes smugly say, “only human,” he may experience all sorts of things in the time between the end of class the previous day and the start of class the next day. He may have received payment reminders from creditors in the meantime, or he may have had a quarrel with his wife, as often happens in life. These are situations that cause distress. Such distress then sets the underlying tone for his state of mind. But happy, joyful moods can also arise. Perhaps the father of one of your students, because he is particularly fond of you, has sent you a rabbit he caught while hunting, or—if you are a female teacher—a bouquet of flowers. It is, after all, quite natural in life that we carry such moods within us. As teachers, we must train ourselves to set aside such moods and speak solely from the content of what is to be presented, so that we are truly able—while presenting a given subject—to speak tragically from within that subject and then transition to a humorous mood as we continue our presentation, while surrendering ourselves entirely to the subject. But the point is that we are able—well, I would say—to perceive the class’s entire response to tragedy, sentimentality, and humor. Then, when we are able to perceive this, we become aware that for the children’s souls, tragedy, sentimentality, or humor mean something extraordinary. And if we let the lesson be carried along by an alternation between humor, sentimentality, and tragedy, if we transition from one mood to another and back again; if we are truly able, after presenting something that required a certain weighty seriousness, to transition back into a certain lightness—but in a natural way, by surrendering to the content—then we bring about in the soul’s mood something akin to inhalation and exhalation for the physical organism. In teaching, the point is that we do not merely teach intellectually or in an intellectualistic way, but that we are able to truly take these moods into account. For what is tragedy, what is sentimentality, what is a heavy state of mind? It is exactly the same as inhalation in the physical organism, as the organism filling itself with air. Tragedy means: we try to contract our physical body and contract it more and more, so that as the physical body contracts, we become aware of how our astral body emerges more and more from the physical body through the compression of the physical body. A humorous mood means that we paralyze the physical body, but conversely now expand the astral body as much as possible, extending it beyond our surroundings, so that we become aware—for example, when we do not merely look at a certain blush but grow into it—of how we extend our astral body beyond the blush, entering into it. Laughter is, after all, nothing other than driving the astral body of the face out of our physiognomy. Laughter is nothing other than an astral exhalation. However, if we wish to apply these things, we must have a certain sense of dynamics. After all, it is not always appropriate for us, when we are dealing with something serious or solemn, to suddenly veer into humor; but in our teaching we can always find ways and means to prevent the child’s soul from becoming entangled in the gravity or tragedy of the moment, and instead to pull it free so that it can truly experience this breathing between the two states of mind.

[ 17 ] With this, I have given you a brief introduction to what a teacher should aim to convey in terms of subtle nuances of mood during class—something that is truly as essential as any aspect of specialized pedagogy.