The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Reflections on the Inner Nature of the Teaching and Educating Professions I

[ 1 ] My dear friends, the impressions I have gathered over a long period of time at the school have prompted me, during the very brief time I am now able to spend in Stuttgart, to say a few words that should really be spoken directly out of these impressions. The fruitfulness of our entire work at an institution such as the Waldorf School depends—as, in fact, does everything that is meant to amount to the art of education—on the teacher and educator finding within themselves the ability to create the mood that sustains them and carries them actively, in the true sense of the word, into all their activities. So this time I would like to speak to you primarily about the teaching staff themselves. I would like to preface this with a few points that I recently touched upon from a somewhat different perspective in an English teachers’ course, and then follow up today with some additional thoughts that, if you allow them to take effect in your souls in the right way, may perhaps contribute to giving you more and more of the right mood. A great deal in teaching and education depends on this mood. One can possess the principles of teaching and education exceptionally well, can work through them in detail with insight—and, for my part, with warmth as well—but what we strive to achieve in school will only fall on truly fertile ground if we can make the overall atmosphere we bring into the school a cohesive, well-rounded, and harmonious one.

[ 2 ] Now, the human being is not only a threefold being from the perspectives from which this has often been suggested, but is in fact a threefold being from every perspective that is even slightly closer to the earthly than the higher spiritual perspectives. And the human being reveals himself to us as threefold in a particularly clear way when we consider humanity’s development through the lens of the human being’s educational activity. We need not go back very far—it would be different for earlier times—let us go back only to the period in human development that still stirs the spirits of those belonging to our Western civilization today: let us go back to the Greek period of human development. We find that in this Greek period, the educator was in fact the gymnast—the one who was primarily concerned with shaping his pupil into a human being, starting from the outer, physical body. But one can only truly understand the Greek gymnast—especially in earlier times—if one realizes that this Greek gymnast was simultaneously engaged in the development of the soul and the spirit. It is true that the Greeks placed particular emphasis on shaping their pupils into human beings through physical exercises, all of which were designed in an artistic sense. But these physical exercises were—and this is something our present age fails to grasp—all oriented toward ensuring that, while the pupil was made to perform this or that dance or other rhythmic or gymnastic movement, spiritual entities could reach the pupil precisely through the unfolding and movement of rhythms, meter, and so on; these entities then lived in the movements, in the rhythm, and in the meter to which the pupil was guided. And as the pupil moved his arms and legs, he did so in such a way that spiritual influence flowed from the limb system—and thereby also from the metabolic system—into the rhythmic system and the sensory-nervous system, and that the whole human being thereby attained his development. Therefore, one should not say at all: “In Greece, gymnastics was practiced primarily”; for this gives the impression that it was practiced as it is here, where in most cases it is carried out only externally, in a physical sense. One should be clear that, for the Greeks, their form of gymnastics simultaneously encompassed emotional and spiritual education. The Greek educator was a gymnast. He trained the body, and through the body he trained the soul and the spirit, because he was able to draw the world of the soul and the spirit into physical movement as if by magic. The ancient Greek gymnasts were also fully aware of this. They saw no value in attempting to educate people in an abstract, intellectual way, or in teaching them anything of what we teach our students today. We speak exclusively to the head, even when we do not intend to. The Greeks set their students in motion; they set them in motion in such a way that this movement harmonized with the dynamics of the spiritual and physical cosmos.

[ 3 ] One can then proceed further in the development of humanity. It already begins with the Romans; people have forgotten the art of nurturing the soul and spirit indirectly through the physical; one must approach the soul directly. Education is best achieved through that which is closest to the soul in life; education is achieved through language. In Roman education, it is truly from language that the essence of what the pupil is to become is drawn; and the educator transforms from a gymnast into a rhetorician. It is the beauty of speech that now enters the educational system from the Roman period onward and which, in a certain sense, continues to exert its influence even through the Middle Ages. The beauty of speech—in the shaping of the word and in the awareness that the word, shaped in a plastic and musical way, has a reciprocal effect on the whole human being. From this awareness, the most important educational principles were derived. The Greeks, so to speak, went back to the physical foundation of the human being and elevated everything to the soul and spirit. The Romans focused on the center of the human being—on the sublimated expression of the rhythmic system, on the poetic, musical language of literature—and they had confidence that, when language is used correctly—that is, when it is used in a truly musical and sculptural-pictorial way—it has a reciprocal effect on the physical and an uplifting effect on the spiritual. Even in this form of education, the focus was not yet on intellectual development; rather, something extraordinarily important and essential was seen in speech itself.

[ 4 ] It so happened that, since the 15th century, the rhetorician as educator has gradually given way to the doctor as educator. Even those educators who today have only completed teacher training courses are, in fact, doctors. Up to now, this has been justified to a certain extent, even if the ideal of the doctorate is not always as clearly before the educators’ eyes as it once was in the case of a physical education teacher I knew well—one who felt extremely uncomfortable on the apparatus and during gymnastics but loved to climb onto a podium and lecture theoretically on physical education. His students sat slumped and hunched over on the benches, listening to what the physical education teacher was lecturing on. This was not possible in other institutions, but in teacher training colleges, he was able to lecture theoretically for one hour a week. There he felt learned; he felt like a doctor. And this principle—the one that does not stem from the rhythmic system but rather from the head, from the sensory-nervous system—of making it the foundation of education became increasingly prominent. The more we as humanity approached the modern era, the more this principle gained the upper hand, beginning in the 15th century. Today, it is not entirely easy to follow the principle of recruiting as many teachers as possible for an institution like the Waldorf School who do not seek to realize the ideal of the “doctor” within themselves—in other words, to avoid hiring doctors as much as possible. I do not mean this in an external sense, but in an inner one. It is not entirely easy because the notion has already taken root in the consciousness of modern humanity that one gains something as a human being simply by being educated. But healing for civilization as a whole will only be possible again when we come to realize that being educated is in reality harmful, that it takes something away from the human being rather than adding to it. And just as I love it immensely when someone nods in understanding at something like what I have just said, I must also say, on the other hand, that I have reservations about this nodding, because people take the matter too lightly. People are not inclined to shed the “doctor” title inwardly, even if they do not actually hold it, even if they carry it only in their general consciousness. And yet, precisely what caused the “doctor” to take the place of the former gymnast and rhetorician is so intertwined with the entire character and essence of modern civilization that we cannot eliminate it. Certainly, it is most evident in education just how detrimental it is for a person to have gone through the doctoral process; but on the other hand, what led to this “Doctor” acquiring a certain leadership quality was necessary for the entire intellectual development of modern culture and civilization.

[ 5 ] But today, more than ever, we are faced with the task of cultivating the synthesis of these three elements of the human being—for this is also a threefold division of human nature: the gymnast, the orator, and the scholar—and this cultivation is most urgently needed in the field of education. If, therefore, everything could truly proceed in accordance with the ideal, it would indeed be an ideal for the teaching profession to be able to continually cultivate, on the one hand, gymnastics in the noblest sense, rhetoric in the noblest sense—with all that this entailed in the older conception—and the element of the scholar in the noblest sense, each separately, and then to synthesize these three elements. I almost shudder at the thought of characterizing so dryly what you must surely know in this regard and must internalize; for I fear that it would then degenerate, just as so much of what must be said does degenerate. It must not degenerate. Care should be taken to ensure that the teacher, for the sake of his art of education and instruction, simply requires the synthesis of external movement, the spiritualized gymnast, the soul-infused rhetorician, and thirdly, the spiritual that has come alive—not the dead, abstracted spiritual.

[ 6 ] And so the entire teaching staff should actually work continuously in connection with what functions as “gymnast” in the noblest sense—that is, what we have in gymnastics and eurythmy—to make all these things their own. And you will see, if you succeed in truly penetrating eurythmy from within, that you will experience for yourselves that there is a soul-and-spirit-acting element in every eurythmic movement. Every eurythmic movement evokes the soul from the deepest foundations of the human being, and every gymnastic movement—if applied in the right way—is such that it evokes, as it were, a spiritual atmosphere within the human being, into which the spiritual can then penetrate—not as an abstract, lifeless concept, but as a living force.

[ 7 ] The rhetorical element—in the noblest sense of the word—remains of particular importance for educators today. No educator, regardless of the field of education in which they choose to work, should fail to ensure that their speech approaches the ideal of artistic speech. One should, in fact, be constantly mindful of cultivating language as such.

[ 8 ] This is something that has disappeared from people’s consciousness to such an extent that, out of a certain old habit at universities, professors of eloquence have continued to be appointed even in the age of intellectualism. Curtius in Berlin was a professor of eloquence, but he could not give lectures on the subject because everyone considered it superfluous to lecture on the art of speaking at a university. So he had to fulfill his duties with something other than lectures on rhetoric and eloquence. But his diploma read “Professor of Eloquence”; he just could no longer lecture on it, for people had come to disregard the value of language. Indeed, this is entirely connected to the increasingly rampant underestimation of the artistic in general. Today we think mostly because we don’t know what else to do, and as a result, we have so few thoughts. For the worst thoughts of all are those conceived in the style of contemporary thinking. The very best are those that arise within a person—truly springing from their humanity—while they are engaged in some kind of action. Thoughts are good when they develop as we formulate them beautifully in language, when the thought resonates back within us from beautifully formulated speech. Then something of the Archangelos lives in our thinking through speech, and there is more within us when we can hear speech than when we develop meager human thinking, no matter how ingeniously we do so. But all this can only be achieved if we come to thoroughly—and the educator and the teacher should be able to do this above all—perceive how out of touch with reality, indeed how out of touch with the world, today’s education of the mind is. We have, after all, turned it into a magnificent science; but unfortunately, this science has the peculiar characteristic that it knows nothing, and that through its ignorance it drives everything living out of human culture and civilization. We therefore do not need to become radical leftists, for we do not need to thoughtlessly shout such things out into the world again; but we do need to act in the school out of this awareness.

[ 9 ] It is not merely thought that has gradually become abstract; little by little, everything in the world that constitutes the content of the human soul has become abstract. At most, when it comes to his higher spiritual faculties, a person is still aware that they arise from flashes of inspiration. He is particularly proud when something occurs to him. But because human beings perceive what is perhaps the most precious thing in their souls as torn away from the universe, they thereby become, inwardly, completely detached from reality, dry, and dead. Our musicians today make music; they compose harmonies and melodies because they come to mind. Certainly, it is very beautiful when someone has many ideas in this field, but why do these ideas come to them? Why should a melody just pop into their head now—out of nowhere, as it were? There is neither a human nor a cosmic reason why a melody should occur to someone who lives here and there and was born here and there. Why is that? It only makes sense if, in experiencing a melody, one feels a connection to the cosmos—if, in experiencing a melody, one actually experiences that connection to the cosmos. One need not become a symbolist, but one must experience this connection with the cosmos. The melody must actually be spoken within us by the spirit of the world; only then does it have meaning, for only then does it carry the world forward in its course.

[ 10 ] You see, one can experience much that is Ahrimanic in the world; much that is Ahrimanic is simply necessary for the development of the world as a whole. But one of the most dreadful manifestations of the Ahrimanic is when someone has to write a dissertation in order to become a private lecturer; for there is no connection between writing the dissertation and becoming a private lecturer. It is an entirely external, thoroughly Ahrimanic connection. But such things exist as something serious in our civilization and infiltrate the educational system because the educational system is influenced from above—that is, by the highest institutions of learning, which are, in essence, organized in a completely absurd manner. Simply speaking this out accomplishes very little; it only makes us unpopular and creates enemies for ourselves. But if we are to work here, we must know that we are called to work from different perspectives.

[ 11 ] Today, for example, if you go to a lecture on physiological nutrition, you will hear: The potato contains such-and-such amounts of carbon, oxygen, and so on; protein contains such-and-such amounts of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen; fats contain such-and-such amounts of nitrogen and so on; the salts that people consume are composed of such-and-such elements—what we now call chemical elements—and then one calculates how much carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen a person needs. Today we find that this leads to the science of nutrition. But this is exactly like someone who wants to know how a watch is made, what the essence of a watch is, and who first goes and inquires—or acquires knowledge—about how gold is mined, right up to the moment the gold is delivered to the watchmaker. The watch has a glass face; he inquires about how the glass is made, going as far as the point where the glass is delivered to the watchmaker. There are other parts of the watch as well. He sets out to learn about all these parts, but he pays no attention whatsoever to what the watchmaker does with them. He will never know anything about the watch. He may be very well informed about the glass, the hands, and the watch case, but he knows absolutely nothing about the watch itself. A person knows just as little about human nutrition as someone who knows that fats consist of such-and-such chemical elements, carbohydrates of such-and-such chemical elements, and so on. One only truly understands nutrition when one can vividly grasp, for example, that in the case of the potato, what we eat is closely related to the root—it is what is known as a rootstock. It is something entirely different when I eat the root-like part of one plant than when I consume the seed-like part of another plant—such as rye, grain, or flour. What matters is not how many carbohydrates are in grain or in the potato, but rather this: when I prepare a food from the seed-like part, from the grain, this food is processed in the part of the human body that extends as far as the lymphatic vessels, and it reaches the nervous-sensory system in a state where it can provide the foundation for thinking. If I eat a potato—a root vegetable—neither the human digestive tract nor the human lymphatic system is capable of truly transforming the potato so that it can become part of the human body: this requires the midbrain, and when you eat potatoes, you are forcing the midbrain to handle the digestive process. One can relieve this burden by consuming other foods. If one overindulges in potatoes, one imposes on the midbrain the obligation to first process the potato for digestion. This means that by feeding a person too many potatoes, one undermines the very function that the midbrain is meant to perform in relation to the nervous-sensory system: the emotional permeation of thoughts; one shifts all thinking to the forebrain, where it becomes intellectual and, in part, even animalistic.

[ 12 ] This approach is not about how potatoes consist of a certain percentage of carbohydrates, cabbage of a certain percentage, rye seeds of such-and-such a percentage—all of that is, in essence, irrelevant to nutritional physiology. What one needs to know is how these things actually affect the human body; and if we want to arrive today at a living understanding of what the human being needs, it is our task to free ourselves from what can never provide a true understanding of the human being. People today already speak of the things of nature in such a way that this discourse is not only misleading but leads directly into a void of thought and a void of feeling.

[ 13 ] As you all know, a well-known process in the human body is that carbon combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which is exhaled—a compound of carbon and oxygen. Yes, people talk about it as if it were a form of combustion, just like what happens outside when a candle burns. There, too, a compound of carbon and oxygen is formed. But that’s just as sensible as saying: “Well, why does a human actually need two living lungs in their chest? We could just as well put two stones in there. Inorganic ones.” Why does a person need a living lung? — If you project an external process like combustion into the human being, then you’re thinking in exactly the same way as if you were viewing the lungs as if they were two stones. What happens outside when oxygen combines—that is dead combustion, inorganic combustion. What happens within the human being is living, soul-infused combustion. Every single process that occurs in nature outside the human body is not the same within the human being; rather, it is different—it is soul-infused, it is spiritual. What carbon does with oxygen in the human organism relates to what happens outside in the same way that the living lung relates to two stones. It is less important to simply reflect on such things once in a while than to orient one’s entire feeling toward them. Then, in all areas of soul life, one enters into such a shared experience with nature that one truly moves from nature to the human being. Today, people remain with nature out there; they do not come to the human being at all.

[ 14 ] Now you will always notice that when you speak to the children with this kind of attitude, they understand even the most difficult concepts—just as they should, given their age. When you rely on those accursed schoolbooks that are standard practice, the children don’t really understand anything at all. The children are tormented and bored, and this provokes their mockery. But what must be done is to make one’s own relationship to the world both vivid and true to reality. This is precisely what the teacher, the educator, needs. I would like to emphasize this particularly strongly by way of introduction: it really ought to be the case that the teacher constantly strives to revive within himself what has become dead in the course of civilization. Thus, it is part of our educational task in Waldorf schools to bring this knowledge to life within ourselves, to feel a proper sense of revulsion toward the way things are presented today in so-called scientific books, and to arrive—only after overcoming this revulsion—at what can truly live within us and what will then most certainly be passed on to the children in a living way. It is precisely on this point that we must begin with ourselves; we must make an effort to view nature itself in this light. This requires a certain amount of courage today, because much of what is true is simply regarded as crazy. We must not allow ourselves to be deterred from developing this courage.

[ 15 ] You see how a butterfly lays an egg, how a caterpillar crawls out, how the caterpillar spins itself into a cocoon for pupation, and how the butterfly emerges from the cocoon. These things are described, but how! Without any awareness of that wondrous mystery that actually underlies them. The butterfly lays the egg. The crucial thing about this egg is that it is laid at the appropriate time of year, when it is particularly receptive to everything that acts as an earthly, solid, or semi-solid force within the natural context. Salt is absolutely essential for the egg’s development. And then comes the time when, in addition to the earthy, the liquid—and with the liquid, the ethereal—gains the upper hand. Liquid permeated by the ethereal gives way to the formation of the caterpillar, which crawls out of the egg. When we have the egg, we tend to think primarily of the earth and the physical. When we see the caterpillar crawling out of the egg and observe its form—that is what, as an ether-permeated, fluid, watery being, actually emerges from the egg, and what makes the caterpillar a caterpillar. Now the caterpillar must develop its nature in the air. The most important thing for the caterpillar is that it now comes into connection with the light, so that it actually lives in the air permeated by light, but at the same time experiences an inner relationship to the astral realm, and through this relationship to the astral realm absorbs the light. This is the essential aspect of the caterpillar: that through its sensory system, it is exposed to the ray of the sun—the radiant sun with its light. And now what occurs in the caterpillar is what you perceive most extremely when you lie in your room at night, with the light still on, and the moths fly toward the light; there is this urge to surrender, to give oneself over—this urge that is inexplicable in the moth. We will hear why. The moth throws itself into the light and burns. Caterpillars have the same urge toward the radiant light. But the caterpillar is organized in such a way that it cannot throw itself into the sun. The moth can throw itself into the light. The caterpillar has the same urge to surrender to the light, but it cannot do so; after all, the sun is quite far away. It develops this urge; it steps outside itself; it moves into the radiant light; it surrenders itself; it spins the physical matter from its body into the sun’s rays. The caterpillar sacrifices itself into the sun’s rays; it wants to dissolve; it wants to destroy itself, but all destruction is birth. During the day, it spins these threads from its shell—its chrysalis—toward the sun’s rays; and when it rests at night, they solidify again, so that these threads are spun rhythmically through day and night. These threads are materialized, spun light.

[ 16 ] From the threads formed by the light—which it materializes—the caterpillar spins its chrysalis and dissolves into it. The light itself is the cause of the chrysalis being spun. The caterpillar cannot throw itself into it, but it surrenders itself, creating the chamber in which the light is enclosed. From above, the chrysalis is formed according to the laws of form derived from primordial wisdom; the butterfly is shaped once the caterpillar has prepared the enclosed chamber for the light. There you have the entire process, from the butterfly egg to the iridescent butterfly born of the light—just as all colors are born of the light. The entire process is born of the cosmos.

[ 17 ] If the process—which unfolds in this way into four stages: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly—is somehow compressed, then the whole changes. If the process takes place within the animal realm, what is ultimately created as a being out of the light remains. You see, there is no other way for us to get to the heart of the matter than by imagining the process artistically. It is impossible to conceive of the process that occurs when the butterfly takes shape from within the chrysalis, born of the light—it is simply not possible to imagine the entire process in any other way than artistically. There is something wonderfully artistic that one enters into when one imagines the process realistically and objectively. Just try it once and see what a completely different kind of consciousness one gains when one knows something in this way. It is a completely different state of consciousness than when one knows something in today’s superficial way—which is actually a form of ignorance. When one grows together with the artistic creation of the cosmos with one’s entire soul and body, then every single detail becomes interesting.

[ 18 ] Look at the tadpole, which still resembles a fish—a creature that breathes through gills and has a sort of fish-like tail for swimming. The entire animal is still within the aqueous element, within the aqueous-earth element. Now the tadpole develops into a frog. What happens here? The blood vessels leading into the gills atrophy, and the entire blood network curves inward. This curving gives rise to the lungs. The blood vessels leading to the little fish-like tail atrophy, while those leading to the legs extend into proper legs, enabling the frog to hop on land. This truly marvelous transformation of a blood network—which initially fills the gills and tail—this marvelous, magnificently artistic transformation into the blood network that now lives in the lungs and limbs—is a truly grandiose artistic process. What brings it about? The first blood network—the gill-tail blood network—is brought about by an earth-watery element; the second blood network is brought about by an airy-watery element that is translucent with light.

[ 19 ] You learn to understand how the elements interact—but interact in an artistic way. When you transition in this way to an understanding of nature, you cannot help but feel as if you possess creative forces within yourself. It is actually impossible for you to be like most people are when they study modern science. They are, in fact, quite inhuman. At best, they can sit there, resting their heads unhappily in their hands and straining their brains, and they grow tired from studying. All of that is unnatural; it’s utter nonsense. It would be just as if we were to grow tired from eating. We only do that when we eat far too much. Surely one cannot grow weary of what is so integral to being human—such as the interplay of nature, spirit, and soul. How many people have I met who have studied and written books, yet suffered from a lack of blood flow to the brain? That is truly as if one were to become anemic from some other process that must take place within the human organism in order to live. No one who transitions to reality in the way I’m describing can suffer from a lack of blood flow to the brain. This is something that animates us from within, and it is something we must have above all else as teachers and educators. We must transition to immediate life, and everything we intend to bring into the school must first carry, support, and truly enliven us from within. That is why no real lesson can actually become boring. I would really like to know how it could become boring; for that to happen, eating and drinking would also have to become boring for the child. That is usually not the case. For that to happen, the child would have to be sick. If a lesson is boring, it must be flawed, and in any case—unless we are dealing with a child with a psychopathic condition—we should ask ourselves: What is actually missing within us if the lesson bores the child?

[ 20 ] These things are what matter, and that is why we should really become aware that we must not let any opportunity pass us by to revitalize ourselves spiritually, emotionally, and inwardly; otherwise, we cannot teach. Otherwise, no matter how much intelligent knowledge we possess, we cannot teach; and this is connected to the fact that it is precisely in this way that we bring about the synthesis between what, in the course of world development, was successively separated in the gymnast, the rhetorician, and the doctor. In particular, however, we need today—so as not to let the last remnants that still live in the genius of language and can affect our entire human being slip away—to try to enter into language musically and in a sculptural-pictorial way, so that what is expressed in language has a reciprocal effect on us. We must not let this opportunity pass us by. Therefore, we must absolutely make it a requirement of ourselves that we do not speak carelessly in school, but that we actually shape our speech so that it truly acquires an artistic quality in the teacher and educator. This, of course, involves a certain degree of inconvenience, yet it is something of immense importance. You see, if this is observed, the school can then become a source of revitalization and renewal for civilization through the synthesis of the gymnast, the rhetorician, and the scholar. We must overcome what has the worst effect in all education today—the “doctor”—that is, knowledge, scholarly knowledge, intellectual knowledge; for we can only achieve something with children by being human beings, not by being able to think.

[ 21 ] Well, that’s what I wanted to share with you by way of introduction. Over the next few hours, I’ll add a few more points regarding what teachers themselves should consider, since the question of education is often a matter for teachers and educators, and then I’ll summarize it in a kind of meditative formula so that the whole concept can come alive within us every day.