The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] I would like to note that, given the course of our discussions so far, I feel compelled today to deviate somewhat from the planned agenda and first speak to you about the more external structure of the Waldorf School. You will have gathered from the reflections we have shared so far that the Waldorf school philosophy holds that—in the strictest sense of the word—the curriculum, educational goals, and indeed the entire structure of the school are, so to speak, derived from what manifests in the physical, soul, and spiritual forces of the human being throughout the course of human life. This required a very special organizational structure for the Waldorf school, and this structure differs in many respects from what people are accustomed to today.

[ 2 ] First of all, it is essential to teach and educate in the sense that I would like to call the “psycho-economic” approach. Today, in the conventional education and teaching system, instruction is highly fragmented, and as a result, it does not have a sufficiently focused impact on the growing child. Here’s the point. Suppose you want to cover a certain topic with a child in school that is meant to become a lasting part of the child’s life. Well, I’d like to single out something that is also part of the standard curriculum—specifically, something from history. Suppose one wanted to cover the age of Queen Elizabeth with the children, including everything that belongs to it and what is usually presented to children in connection with this era. You will admit that this can be done by discussing the details of Elizabeth’s age in history lessons over the course of half a year. But there is another way to do it. As a teacher, one can first, through well-organized preparation, develop a keen sense of the facts relevant to this era. Some of these facts carry particular weight; if one knows them and allows them to take root in one’s soul, they will easily imprint themselves there, and the other facts will then fall into place naturally. And under certain circumstances, if one truly brings this material into the classroom with a teacher’s free mastery of it—it is not even an exaggeration to say that in three or four hours, one can not only convey to the children what would otherwise take half a year, but one can even convey it better—so that the children are left with a lasting impression that will stay with them for their entire lives.

[ 3 ] Anyone who has ever taken a look at everything our children are supposed to learn will readily admit what I have just suggested. For what our children are supposed to have already learned by the age of fourteen under the conditions of our modern civilization—as it is usually presented in the form of accumulated material—is something that, in any case, cannot be mastered. It is never actually mastered anywhere, but people act as if it were, and above all, the curricula and educational goals are designed as if it could and should be mastered.

[ 4 ] The point is that, in keeping with the Waldorf school philosophy, all instruction should be structured in such a way that as much as possible is conveyed to the children in the shortest possible time using the simplest possible means, so that the child never loses their inner, spiritual—not even their intellectual, I mean here, but their inner, spiritual, intuitive overview.

[ 5 ] You understand that this places special demands on teachers. And, for example, from what I call “psycho-economic instruction,” I have come to a conviction that I hold firmly—though it may not always be put into practice quite so firmly—but which I would like to express so firmly that I say: If one wants to convey something to a child in half an hour in the right economic way—so that the child suffers no harm—then, as a teacher, one needs at least two to three hours of preparation to bring the whole thing into such a living, inner, organic context that one must then carry through the school door and into the classroom. - This educational principle certainly places great demands on the teaching staff. But these great demands are dictated by the subject matter itself, and they simply must be met as best as possible.

[ 6 ] However, this requires a very specific structure and organization of teaching and education if one wishes to put this fundamental pedagogical and didactic concept into practice, especially when faced with something like the structure of the Stuttgart Waldorf School. I would now like to describe this institution to you in broad strokes—not to justify the details just yet (that will be the subject of my subsequent remarks)—but I would first like to give you, so to speak, a general outline of how things actually work at the Waldorf School.

[ 7 ] So, having prepared in the manner described, the teacher enters the school building in the morning. The children arrive a little earlier in the summer, at eight o’clock, and a little later in the winter, and after they have gathered in their classrooms, they are first brought together by each teacher beginning their class with a saying that addresses universal human and religious themes as much as possible; this is recited or sung in unison by the entire class, with a prayer-like character. A genuine prayer may then follow. The details are, of course, always left entirely to the individuality of the teacher in question at our Free Waldorf School.

[ 8 ] Then the so-called “main lessons” begin—those main lessons that, according to standard curricula, are often fragmented. It is precisely the psychological-economic principle I drew attention to that, if taken to its logical conclusion, makes it necessary to turn away completely from what is commonly called a “timetable.” In the conventional sense, we do not have a timetable for the main lessons; rather, depending on how a subject area can be completed, the child is taught in his or her class for four to six weeks during the first two periods of the day—between which there may be a break, and for younger children there must be one. Thus, for four to six weeks, a child works through a geographical topic or a mathematical topic. Once these four to six weeks are over, another topic is begun, which in turn has its own allotted time, but which is not continuously interrupted by anything else according to a fixed schedule.

[ 9 ] Thus, throughout the year, the content that the curriculum is intended to include according to the relevant principles is presented to the child in a psychologically and economically sound manner, so that no excessive demands are placed on the child to the extent that the child ever feels, at any moment, that it is struggling to keep up. The child should never have this feeling. The inner structure of the instruction should be arranged so that the child never feels that making progress is difficult, but rather should always have a longing to truly move from one thing to the next. And the child is never actually tempted to regard anything as incomplete; instead, continuity can be achieved at every step.

[ 10 ] It goes without saying, of course, that as the end of the school year approaches before the holidays, everything that has been—as they say—taught to the child during the various periods throughout the year is brought back to the child’s mind in a sort of recapitulation—this can be done in a pleasant context.

[ 11 ] All of this, then—what constitutes the actual core instruction—falls into this category. And care is always taken to ensure that, within those four to six weeks, the child can be given a complete whole; and precisely because it is a whole, it provides the child with something to carry into life, just as children are meant to carry things into life.

[ 12 ] Just think about it: if we want to properly care for children’s limbs, we will avoid putting them in clothing that hinders their growth. We want to nurture the child’s physical being in such a way that the human being can develop freely according to the principles of growth inherent within them, right up to old age. The same must also be done with everything pertaining to the soul and the spirit. If we give the child ready-made, sharply defined mental images, they cannot grow along with the child’s developing human life. The mental images, the feelings, the impulses of the will that we impart to the child must be treated like human limbs. They must not be clad in rigid, abstract definitions that are then retained, so that at the age of forty-five one still holds the same concept of something one was taught at the age of eight—just as one would not still have one’s little finger at the age of forty-five in the same condition as it was at the age of eight! The point is that we must build up the child’s organism—including its soul—in such a way that its individual parts can truly grow; in other words, we must not teach them something so rigid and fixed that, at the age of forty-five, we still think and feel about a matter the same way we did at the ages of eight or nine. But this is only possible if we present things to children in the spiritual-economic manner I have described.

[ 13 ] The rest of the morning is then devoted to the more general subjects. — I do find it abhorrent to use the term “subject,” but it has now become common practice. — Above all, modern foreign languages play the most significant role. Because these modern foreign languages are intended to become an integral part of the children’s lives, they are taught starting when the children enter school at the age of six or seven, and they are taught in such a way that the child can truly immerse themselves in the foreign language—that is, so that the use of the mother tongue as a medium is avoided when learning the foreign language.

[ 14 ] Of course, since we are now dealing with older children than we did back then—who have already learned their native language—instruction in another language must be structured somewhat differently. This is especially true when one considers their ages. But the children must integrate the language in such a way that, when they express something in the foreign language, they are not secretly translating it all the time. This principle of translation must be completely avoided. So when a child is taught a word or a phrase—let’s say, in the simplest case, “table” or “window”—this “table” is not linked to the German word, but to the actual table, or the “window” to the actual window. The foreign language is taught directly in connection with the thing itself, with the objects, so that the child first learns to speak and then to translate, if the latter turns out to be desirable at all in one case or another.

[ 15 ] One can certainly observe that by avoiding conventional grammar and so on, we achieve something that children absorb in a very vivid way. — The specifics will, of course, be the subject of our discussions in the coming days as we address the different stages of childhood. For now, I would like to provide more of a general overview of the physical facilities.

[ 16 ] This period also includes what must be considered particularly important: handicrafts instruction; and, to some extent, what is commonly referred to as manual arts instruction. In accordance with the Waldorf School principle—which, after all, brings boys and girls together in the same class—handwork instruction is conducted equally for both boys and girls. And it is a great joy in handwork class when boys and girls knit, crochet, and do other similar activities together. Based on practical experience in the school, one can certainly affirm—even though boys derive something different from knitting than girls do—that boys nevertheless benefit greatly from it and, above all, do it with great joy. As has been shown so far—and I will discuss this in more detail later—this collaborative work is of particular benefit to a person’s overall development. In handicrafts classes, the girls must in turn do exactly the same things as the boys, including more challenging tasks, so that attention can be paid everywhere to dexterity and to the development of a person’s skill.

[ 17 ] Then, during these later morning hours, there is also what one might call the actual worldview instruction. You see, the Waldorf School—and indeed any school that might emerge from the anthroposophical movement—naturally places no emphasis on teaching anthroposophy to children in the form it exists today. It would even regard that as the most misguided course of action one could take. For anthroposophy, as it exists today, is something that must first be discussed with adults—sometimes with people who are already quite advanced in years. It is therefore structured in its literature and in the way it approaches people in such a way that it takes the form of how one speaks to adults and how one addresses them. I would therefore have to regard it as the most absurd thing imaginable if one were to attempt to convey in any way to a child what is written in my *Theosophy* or in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. That can never be the case, for—forgive me for using a somewhat trivial expression—by presenting a child with something entirely unsuitable for its age, one would cause it to, as we say in German, “go out of its mind.” The child cannot actually do this, but this longing to “go out of its mind” lies within it.

[ 18 ] What matters, then, is not bringing something into the school as such that constitutes anthroposophical content today, but rather that anthroposophy is not a theory—not a theoretical worldview that merely dwells in ideas—but rather a way of life that engages the whole person. So when the teacher enters the school as an anthroposophist, he has become a skilled person, and he practices a pedagogical and didactic art—and it is this pedagogical and didactic art that matters.

[ 19 ] So the Waldorf School is meant to be a school of method, and this method must be derived from the anthroposophical worldview. It is indeed true that when one takes such a practical, life-oriented worldview to heart, one does not become a theorist turned away from the world, but rather a skilled person. Now, I do not wish to claim that all those within the anthroposophical movement already fulfill all these ideals in this regard. That is not the case. I still know people within the anthroposophical movement who are not capable—if, pardon the crude expression, a button on their pants comes off—of sewing it back on themselves according to all the rules of the art. Of course, one is not a complete human being if one cannot do that. And above all, the attitude is still lacking in many cases—the one expressed by the saying: One cannot be a philosopher if one is not able, when necessary, to mend one’s own boots. — This is, of course, an extreme way of putting it, but it conveys the point, which I’m sure you will understand.

[ 20 ] Anyone who wishes to make a theoretical claim must be far more deeply immersed in life than, for example, a tailor, a shoemaker, an engineer, or the like. I would say: one can only forgive someone for expressing a theoretical idea if that person is also a practitioner of life. Otherwise, any expression of thought immediately becomes something that actually has little to do with life anymore. By bringing anthroposophical practical living into the school in this way, teachers are to be equipped—as artists—to always find the right course of action based on the child’s expressions. In each individual case, instinct then plays the best role when one brings the entire approach of an artist of education and teaching into the school. This is not actually fulfilled to the greatest extent in external life today.

[ 21 ] Please do not take what I am saying as something intended to offend anyone. Those who are entering school today must surely feel what I am saying most keenly; they must see themselves more as victims of their time, simply because they have no other choice. They have no choice simply because they have gone through the ordeal of high school and college. But when it comes to the practical conduct of instruction, what matters is that one can do something different at any given moment, depending on what the child tells you needs to be done. But is that how education is carried out in the wider world? In the wider world, education is conducted in such a way that one knows from the outset: this is what must happen; this is what must be instilled in the child. It often strikes me that, from this educational standpoint, the child need not even be present for what is actually taking place. One could quite easily, following today’s school principles, have the children make papier-mâché casts of themselves when they are admitted to school, and then one would have to do exactly the same thing—since it is determined from the outset—to the casts as one now does to the actual children on a case-by-case basis.

[ 22 ] We certainly did not want to create a school based on a particular worldview, as one might easily think upon hearing, from the outside, that the anthroposophists had founded a school; rather, the aim is to incorporate anthroposophy into educational practice.

[ 23 ] For this reason, I was relatively indifferent to the idea of simply leaving the pinnacle of worldview—the religious worldview—to the respective representatives of traditional religious denominations. And so Catholic religious instruction was quietly entrusted to the Catholic priest, and Protestant religious instruction to the Protestant pastor. We were not afraid that what they might corrupt could not be made up for by something else. But it turned out that when our friend Emil Molt founded the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, the majority of the children were initially the working-class children from his factory. For the most part, they were children of dissidents—children who, had they attended a different school, would not have participated in any religious instruction at all and would have grown up without any religious upbringing. For these children—both in the way such needs naturally manifest in children and among their parents—the need arose to have such instruction after all, and so we had to establish our own free religious instruction for the children. Just as Protestant instruction is taught by a Protestant pastor and Catholic instruction by a Catholic priest, these classes are taught by our teachers, who consider themselves certified religious education teachers in addition to their regular teaching duties. This is how anthroposophical religious education is taught. And we have managed to ensure that these independent, anthroposophical religious education classes—which are already available to many other children today—hold particularly great promise for working-class children.

[ 24 ] This is where a particular difficulty arises; for we have an anthroposophy for adults, and today, when a teacher gives anthroposophical religious instruction, he must grapple with the task of creating content for what he is to cover with the children. It involves shaping the anthroposophical worldview into a form that can be presented to the child. And we are working extensively on this task: adapting a modern worldview—one in harmony with the human spirit—for the child. It is indeed necessary to delve deeply into, for example, the extent to which the symbols we must use affect the child, and how intangible factors come into play. Well, we will speak about that in a moment.

[ 25 ] You will understand that a school such as the Waldorf School, even though it must generally adhere to the principle of deriving its curriculum and educational goals from existing human knowledge, cannot nevertheless be organized today in the sense of an ideal. One must make the most diverse compromises, for it is, after all, impossible today to educate and teach a child exactly as one might according to an abstract ideal—such as the Waldorf school philosophy. The child would be placed into life in such a way that he or she simply would not be able to find his or her place in it. It is relatively easy to level all manner of criticism at life as it is today. There is much about it that one may not like, and one can indulge in very astute, witty critiques of how everything should be different. But one cannot educate people who, when they step out of school into life, have nothing but a sense of criticism for the seemingly senseless nature of life. No matter how imperfect life may seem in the face of abstract intellectual criticism, one must be immersed in life. Waldorf children must, of course, be sent out into the world—otherwise the Waldorf school would have no meaning—while greater consideration is given to their humanity than is usually the case in our present age; but they must not be turned into people who are out of touch with the realities of their own time, in the sense that they position themselves merely as detached critics. That is what I mean. And that is why, right from the start, the most diverse compromises had to be made, including with regard to the curriculum and educational goals. We could only set out to do what was possible. I therefore drafted a memorandum right at the outset, which was then submitted to the higher school authorities and which states roughly the following: From the child’s entry into school—from the age of six or seven until the age of nine, that is, until the end of the third grade—the child is taught in each year as freely as possible according to what is deemed appropriate. The distribution of the curriculum and the setting of instructional goals are left to the discretion of the teacher or the teaching staff, which is organized and operates in a fully representative manner. Great importance is placed on ensuring that not only does the individual teacher know his or her students, but that a corresponding relationship can be fostered between the teaching staff and the children—one that extends into the breaks between classes—so that this or that child can also seek advice from the teacher they happen to like at the moment, and so on. It is a true joy, when one enters a Waldorf school, to see how appropriately the individual children behave toward the teachers during breaks and even when no lessons are being taught.

[ 26 ] Thus, during this period—roughly from the ages of six or seven to nine or ten—instruction is provided according to this principle. At the same time, however, the goal is for every child, upon completing third grade, to be ready to enter fourth grade at another school. In this way, the child is not removed from everyday life, but is given something that gives them an advantage over their peers, without, however, preventing them from rejoining the rest of life.

[ 27 ] It is also emphasized that from the age of nine, in the third grade, through the age of twelve, at the end of the sixth grade, instruction is conducted strictly according to the principle that, upon reaching the age of twelve, the child will again be able to enter another school—the seventh grade, for example—and keep up well. Such compromises had to be made because we do not want to be fanatics, but rather practical, down-to-earth people when it comes to the aspirations of the Waldorf school. And when elementary school is completed at the age of fourteen, the child should be able to enter the corresponding grades at the Realschule, Gymnasium, and so on—whatever all those wonderful institutions are called—so that everything I have just outlined is truly followed.

[ 28 ] Now, we are striving to expand the Waldorf School—each year, after first establishing a complete elementary school where children remained until they turned fourteen, we add a new grade—so that we can truly reach the level that young people have attained by the time they have completed high school or secondary school, that is, when they wish to attend a university or college.

[ 29 ] Of course, we must also structure the entire educational system and instruction in such a way that young people can then take their Maturitätsprüfung, as they say in Austria, or their Abiturium, as they say in Germany. In other countries, such wonderful things are called by different names. In any case, however, the children should be brought to a level where they can then advance to a university. We do not yet have the opportunity to establish our own universities, for whatever we do in this regard is entirely of a private nature. No state would allow us to issue valid certificates from self-founded universities for exams that did not take place; for, of course, we would not be holding any exams.

[ 30 ] Well, we are simply compelled to develop the actual Waldorf school curriculum in a way that involves compromise, and we certainly do not wish to deny that. The point, however, is that within this framework, as much of the spirit I described earlier as is at all possible should be incorporated. When we founded the Waldorf School—since we established it from the outset as a comprehensive school—we naturally ended up with children who had been expelled from all sorts of school classes. We’ve certainly had ample opportunity to see the effects of that very strict discipline in the schools on our Waldorf School children. We now have a little over two years of Waldorf School discipline behind us. I will also speak about the details of school discipline. We have this Waldorf school discipline behind us—which, for the most part, consists of the fact that we have abolished discipline—and yet we have, for example, something to report that I would like to mention as symptomatic.

[ 31 ] Just a few weeks ago—we were, after all, still in temporary quarters—we laid the cornerstone for a larger school building. I felt that this cornerstone-laying ceremony required all the children to be present. Well, that’s just how life goes—everything takes longer than one usually plans—and so all the children were already there by the time we began taking the preparatory steps for the cornerstone-laying ceremony. I first had to meet with the teaching staff and a few other people. But by then, all the children were already there. We had to gather in the so-called conference room—the teachers’ lounge. What should we do with the children? The school administrator simply said, “Let’s put the children in their classrooms. They’re old enough now that we can safely put them in their classrooms; they’ll behave themselves there and do things that won’t disturb us.”

[ 32 ] Well, even with the highly questionable discipline that had been imposed on us, we had—in our own way of doing away with discipline—reached the point where we were allowed to put the children in the classrooms, and they didn’t disturb us at all. Of course, this should be taken with a grain of salt; for those with sensitive ears, it might still be a nuisance even now, but that doesn’t really hurt anyone. Children who don’t bother those with sensitive ears aren’t usually known for having good discipline. Well, it turns out that through the imponderable influence of such a school philosophy, many things change that are otherwise taken for granted and practiced in everyday school life.

[ 33 ] As you may have already heard, in everyday school practice, certain types of punishments are necessary. Of course, at first there was a lot of trial and error involved before we figured out how to proceed. And so, when this topic came up for discussion, one of the teachers was able to offer a rather insightful explanation, which I’d like to share with you here. He first wanted to test what effect certain types of punishments would have on the children; this was after the children had already experienced some of the Waldorf school discipline, specifically in a class where there were some truly terrible “Rangen.” These “Rangen”—as they call particularly good-for-nothing children in Germany—these good-for-nothings had done something wrong and were to be punished, somewhat along the lines of how it’s done in other schools. They were to stay after school, as they say, and do some arithmetic during that time. And when this punishment had been imposed on individual members of the class, lo and behold, all the others came over and said they wanted to stay there and do arithmetic too, because arithmetic was such a wonderful thing.

[ 34 ] As you can see, the concept of punishment had undergone a complete metamorphosis. It had become something entirely different—something highly desirable for the entire class. These are, in fact, things that cannot be achieved by, shall I say, directly intending them; rather, they arise as a consequence when the other aspect is cultivated in the proper way. I know that in today’s world, people would have very specific concerns about certain types of disciplinary measures.

[ 35 ] On one occasion, I was able to observe very clearly just how much depends on the natural rapport between teacher and student—a rapport brought about by the various character traits of students, teachers, and educators. In fact, one can say that the way the teacher enters the school in the morning—in keeping with the overall spirit of school life—determines whether the children respond with sympathy or antipathy; this, in turn, determines whether they benefit at all or not. And one can even debate whether a sloppy teacher who applies no real principles is of more use than a teacher who insists on applying excellent pedagogical and didactic principles—principles that are terribly good but abstract and fail to translate into practical life. Such principles are, after all, plentiful today. I’m not being sarcastic at all when I call them very ingenious—it’s certainly open to debate; but when a sloppy, careless teacher enters the classroom, yet radiates a certain warmth toward his or her class through his or her very being, then the children may not become particularly well-behaved, but they’ll take away even more that’s useful for life than if a teacher—who, through his very being, arouses antipathy—enters the classroom with excellent educational principles and then imparts his lessons to the children. In such cases, one can observe that, precisely because of these excellent educational principles—when the teacher’s demeanor evokes antipathy—the children carry a terrible, as it is called today, nervousness with them into their later lives.

[ 36 ] All of these issues can and must be discussed if one is serious about the art of teaching and education. And that is why I once found myself in a particular situation that, of course, will be viewed by some as something horrifying. I was told, when I happened to be at the school again, that a boy in one class was completely unmanageable, had committed all sorts of misdeeds, and the class’s teachers didn’t know what to do with him. I had the boy brought to me and wanted to see what the situation with him actually was. You’ll admit that in many schools, such a case would result in a good beating, or perhaps milder punishments, or something of that sort. Well, I examined the boy very closely, and the result of my examination was that I promoted him from the class he was in to the next higher one; that was his punishment. Well, I haven’t heard any complaints since then. His teacher confirms that he is now even a model student. Everything is certainly in order now, and that’s what really matters.

[ 37 ] As you can see, it all comes down to truly understanding the child’s mind and the child’s entire nature. It was simply impossible to establish a connection between this boy and his teacher, and since the boy’s intelligence made it possible to move him up to the next grade—and there was no parallel class available—that is exactly what had to be done. They would have thoroughly ruined him if they had moved him down to the next lower grade. So if, in all these matters, one keeps human well-being and human development in mind, then that is precisely what leads to the right teaching and educational practice. And that is why one must always—I would say—address the individual case in a symptomatic way. The Waldorf School—and we certainly do not deny this—is in many respects built entirely on compromises; but as far as possible today, education and instruction are carried out in the spirit of a genuine understanding of the human being.

[ 38 ] Thus, the morning is structured as I have already indicated to you, and certain subjects—such as instruction in ancient languages—must be included for the very reason that we must prepare the students for higher education. It will be particularly necessary in these classes to take into account what is known as “psychic economy.” These Latin and Greek classes will also take place during the morning hours.

[ 39 ] The afternoon hours are then devoted to activities related to the physical body: gymnastics, eurythmy, and those activities that specifically belong to the arts. We will discuss this in more detail in the coming days. It is precisely the artistic aspect, then, that plays a very decisive role in our overall curriculum at the Waldorf school.

[ 40 ] It is certainly worth considering that everything that constitutes, so to speak, intellectual education and academic instruction should be covered with the children during the morning hours, and only after this has been completed should the children be guided toward physical activities in the afternoon—provided they do not burn off their energy during the breaks in the morning. And once this more physical and gymnastic education has taken hold, the child is not led back to intellectual instruction. I have already indicated that this has a destructive effect on life; for while the children are engaged in activities related to the physical—we will go into the details in the coming days—an unconscious, supersensory force is at work within the child, and once the mind has devoted itself to this physical education, it is no longer able to return to intellectual work after such activity. To squeeze in a gym class in the middle of the rest of the lessons—even if it is not quite a full hour—and to believe that this will achieve something for the lessons through variety is entirely wrong. The unified character that this lends to the morning and afternoon lessons proves to be thoroughly beneficial for human development. It is precisely when reference is made to the human aspect in this way that human affinities—these inner human inclinations—develop in the very best way in the young people being educated.

[ 41 ] I have mentioned how we ourselves were compelled to provide a kind of anthroposophical religious instruction for the children. But very soon, alongside this anthroposophical religious instruction, another need arose, and we had to move on to introducing a Sunday service that has a ritualistic quality and in which the children participate with great religious fervor. The ritual aspect, which approaches people through imagery, is truly something that, from the perspective of perception, draws one into the soul and into religious feeling. And so this small ritual, which is performed with the children every Sunday morning, also exerts an extraordinarily deepening influence on the children’s souls.

[ 42 ] Of course, this had to be expanded upon when the children left school. In the rest of Germany, it is customary for children to undergo confirmation—a kind of initiation, a rite of passage into adulthood through a ceremonial and educational ceremony. We, too, have established something similar for children who have completed elementary school, and this, too, has made an extraordinary and, above all, lasting impression on the children, as has already been noted.

[ 43 ] The fact is that such teaching and educational practices, based on an understanding of human nature, reveal certain things to be necessary that would otherwise go unnoticed. For example: in Germany, children receive report cards at the end of the school year. Well, we do have to give them report cards so they have something to take home for the vacation. But when it comes to these report cards, we were also compelled to take a very special stance. I must admit that I would find it extremely difficult to cope in a Waldorf school if I had to go along with the report card system customary in Germany. I wouldn’t be able to do it well, for the simple reason that I have never been able to grasp the difference between what constitutes a “satisfactory,” “almost satisfactory,” “sufficient,” “almost sufficient,” “barely sufficient,” and so on—and then have it all expressed in numbers, so that in Germany some report cards look like this: on one side are the subjects, and next to them are grades like 4½, 3, 3–4, and so on. I had never in my life been able to make sense of these obscure connections! And so we simply had to organize the report cards differently.

[ 44 ] When the child goes on vacation at the end of the year, however, he or she does receive a report card. It contains a kind of reflection written by the teacher specifically for that child—a biographical account of the year—and it has been shown time and again that the children receive this with great satisfaction. They read their portrait there—one that is drawn with appropriate goodwill, but by no means biased, and certainly not one that whitewashes anything. They accept this with great satisfaction. And then we include a motto, completely personalized for each child, which is written into each child’s report card. This motto then serves as a kind of guiding principle for the coming year. This is something that, I believe, has already proven its worth and will continue to do so in the future—even if, to use a term that has become popular in Germany in recent years, one might call it a “report card substitute.”

[ 45 ] Well, under the influence of these Waldorf school practices, the children actually enjoy being at school, and it can certainly be seen as a sign of how much they enjoy it—I like to share specific details to illustrate this through examples—that, for instance, one mother told me: “My son had never gotten into the habit of being affectionate with me in any way; he just couldn’t be affectionate. He has now started at the Waldorf school, completed the school year, and gone on vacation; the vacation came to an end, and lo and behold, when the vacation ended and the boy—who is still quite young—was told he could go back to school, that was the first time the boy had ever kissed me. — At any rate, this is a sign of what takes root in the hearts of those children who are raised in human kindness through an understanding of human nature and who are sustained in this through witness and so on.

[ 46 ] Before I proceed with the description of the details, I wanted to bring up these points today—which, I would say, are related to the physical layout of the Waldorf School—in order to create a mental image of the Waldorf School as such. I felt this was necessary, and on this point I had to deviate from the originally planned agenda, according to which today’s session was supposed to cover the childhood stage immediately following the change of teeth. That will be covered tomorrow. But I wanted to be able to place the following description within what has emerged as the external, practical framework for the Waldorf School.