The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Once the child has reached the age of nine, an important developmental stage occurs between the ages of nine and ten. This developmental stage can be characterized by noting how the child’s need for authority—which arises with the change of teeth—remains, in a sense, undifferentiated until the age of nine is reached. The child does not differentiate itself from authority. It accepts whatever is presented as authoritative at face value and feels a need to conform to it. Upon reaching the age of nine, something quite special occurs in the child. From this point on, so to speak, the child wants authority to be justified in a certain way.

[ 2 ] Don’t misunderstand me. The child does not rationally weigh the considerations: Is the authority justified or not? But there is something in the child’s entire emotional life that must have the effect of ensuring that authority proves itself through its own quality, through its embeddedness in life, and through its own certainty. From this point on, the child has a particularly keen sense of this, and this is expressed precisely by the fact that, objectively speaking, a turning point occurs in the child’s life at this stage—one that must be taken fully into account if the child’s upbringing and education are to be sound. Up until this point, the child differs little from its surroundings. In the child’s perception, the world and the child itself belong together.

[ 3 ] When characterizing these things, one must express oneself somewhat radically; but I ask you to take this radical expression in its proper sense. One must say, for example: before the age of nine, for the child in the full sense of the word, there are not humans, animals, plants, or minerals, but rather beings in general. Now, of course, when expressed so radically, this does not mean that one can now proclaim the dogma that a child does not distinguish between people and lilies; but in a certain sense, what I have said is true, and in a certain sense, the art of education and teaching must certainly take into account that such things, when presented in a radical manner, should not be taken dogmatically. Life itself—which determines everything and does not allow anything to appear with the sharp contours with which the pedant would like to see it—already ensures this.

[ 4 ] By the time a child turns nine, for example, what is always portrayed in a completely false light by child psychology clearly comes to an end. One observes that when a child bumps into the corner of a table, the child hits the corner of the table. But then science says: the child personifies the table; it turns it into a living being that it must punish. Saying something like this reveals little understanding of the child’s state of mind, for it is by no means the case that the child personifies the table. The child has simply not yet learned to distinguish between an inanimate object and a living being. The process of personification does not take place at all in a child’s life; rather, the child still treats the external world in very general terms, and places itself within this external world in such a way that it differs very little from it. And the period after the child turns nine becomes particularly important because it is precisely then—at a significant turning point in life—that questions spring up from within the child; one might say, whole mountains of questions, all of which relate to the child’s intuitive sense of distinguishing itself from its surroundings, as well as from its guide and educator.

[ 5 ] Up to that point, the child has had little sense of whether the teacher or educator is a clumsy fellow who himself bumps into things here and there, drops the chalk as soon as he picks it up, and so on. They have little sense of noticing such things, as exemplified by that preacher who would touch his nose after every sentence, which filled his congregation with amusement. The child does notice such things even before reaching the age of nine, but they pass right by their mind without making a deeper impression. So anyone who believes that the child does not notice them at all is mistaken. But after turning nine, the child begins to pay close attention to precisely such things. Later, in the tenth and eleventh years, the child pays less attention to them again. The child pays attention to them, and this is woven into the entire system of questions that weighs on the child’s soul at this stage of life. These questions need not be spoken aloud, but they are there. The child intuitively senses whether the teacher conducts himself skillfully in life, whether the teacher, above all, stands firmly grounded in life, whether the teacher knows what he wants, and, above all, the child has a subtle sense of the teacher’s overall state of mind.

[ 6 ] A skeptic has a very different effect on a child than a person who is a believer in the true sense of the word. The tone of a skeptic’s voice is simply quite different from that of a believer. And a child between the ages of nine and ten is concerned with such matters. There are many individual factors inherent in human life that must be taken into account here. An Evangelical Orthodox teacher has a very different effect on a child at this particular stage of life than a Catholic-minded teacher, simply because of the different state of the soul.

[ 7 ] It is also worth considering here that this aspect of life manifests itself in the most diverse ways among different races and nationalities—even somewhat earlier in one nationality and somewhat later in another. It manifests itself individually in every child—earlier in one, later in another—and therefore one cannot say much in general, but only this: it must be evident from the teacher’s overall approach that he or she can truly recognize this turning point in the child’s development, just as it is of infinite importance in education that one be able to give the pupil the proper, focused attention.

[ 8 ] Here at our Waldorf school, we place great emphasis on this. In the faculty meetings we hold, we discuss each individual child, so to speak, and—as far as possible, of course; as the school continues to grow, this will require additional facilities beyond those already in place—we strive to learn as much as possible about the child’s unique individuality. And there is indeed much to learn, especially when one sets out to study the intangible aspects of a growing human being.

[ 9 ] These imponderables sometimes yield quite surprising results. For example, I set out to carefully observe, over a period of time, how things play out in our coeducational classes when there are more girls than boys, an equal number of girls and boys, or more boys than girls; quite apart from the external factors that can be grasped by the intellect and that are based on the children’s interactions, a class in which girls are in the majority is something entirely different from a class in which boys are in the majority. Here, these intangible factors have a particularly strong effect on human relationships. However, one must not draw the most convenient conclusions from such premises. The most convenient conclusions would, of course, be to say: “Well, then, keeping boys and girls together is no good; they must be separated.” — This, in turn, would cause far greater harm; rather, one must learn how to manage the class regardless of whether one situation or the other arises.

[ 10 ] It therefore depends to a large extent on the kind of attention one gives to the individual child and to the class as a whole. This raises extraordinarily profound philosophical questions. For example, we have clearly observed that teachers learn the most when they integrate themselves into the lesson in the right way, and that, naturally, a teacher’s lesson after some time is quite different from what it was a while ago. Here, too, unconscious and subconscious factors play an extraordinarily large role.

[ 11 ] Based on everything I have described, it is quite inevitable that at this point the child will approach the guide or teacher and ask all sorts of questions. It is not so much the content of the questions that matters, nor is it so much the content of the answer the teacher now gives, but rather it is important that, through what I would call the indefinable—which must develop precisely at this point in life between the guide and the child—the child receives an intuitive understanding of this within their soul: Until now, I have looked up to my teacher; now I can no longer do so without knowing that the teacher, in turn, looks up to something that is in some way rooted within life itself. — Particularly curious children then follow the teacher even outside of school, noticing all sorts of things the teacher does outside of school. Taking all of this into account is of immense importance. But what everything depends on is recognizing this moment—knowing that the child is now approaching you in such a way that the interaction between guide and child demands trust, an ever-increasing sense of trust. For how one behaves toward the child at this moment determines an infinite number of things for the child’s entire future life; whether the child becomes a person without a firm footing in life, or whether the child becomes a person who stands securely in life, sometimes depends on whether the teacher finds a sufficiently confident way to relate to the child at this moment.

[ 12 ] One might well ask, however: How, then, is a person actually dependent on his or her environment if, between the ages of nine and ten, he or she is so extraordinarily reliant on the teacher and guide behaving in a certain way? But these matters cannot be elucidated without addressing the questions deeply connected to human destiny—the karmic questions—and that is precisely what we will be focusing on here, especially in the final sessions. For thinking that relates to the educator and teacher in the right way, however, what I have said is absolutely true. What matters at this point is that the child finds someone—whether that is one person or several is of lesser importance—who, in a certain sense, remains a model for the rest of their life.

[ 13 ] Few people notice what I am about to say, but time and again—during certain periods of life—the influence of childhood resurfaces in a person, and the image that repeatedly emerges from these turning points in life holds a truly remarkable and profound significance. Whether this appears later in life, in a dream or while awake, whether it is viewed as vague, entirely sympathetic, or entirely unsympathetic—this is extraordinarily important; not sympathy and antipathy as such, but the fact that there is something in the child’s mind that becomes sympathy in one case and antipathy in another. And I do not even wish to claim that the entire process I am describing here—this reminiscence of the turning point in life between the ages of nine and ten—stands fully explicit in the conscious mind; sometimes it may lie almost entirely in the subconscious, but the corresponding process must take place. It is always present. People who dream vividly will, at almost periodic intervals in their dreams, see a certain scene emerge—or the figure itself, the guide who has stood by the child’s side, helping, admonishing, inspiring trust, and fostering a personal connection. This is what the child needs between the ages of nine and ten, and it is connected to the objective shift taking place within the child: up until then, the child had not actually distinguished itself from the outside world, from its surroundings, and now it feels the need to become a person inwardly—a self-contained individual—and to confront the outside world.

[ 14 ] In accordance with what has just been said, it is necessary to distribute the educational material throughout this stage of the child’s life. In our time, we will have to approach education and instruction with a particularly deep understanding of these matters. Just consider how many people today have the opportunity, at the age immediately following the loss of their baby teeth, to see all kinds of locomotives, streetcar cars, and so on. I can say that I have been able to make very personal observations in this area, for I spent my childhood at a small railroad station and saw a great many locomotives pass by every day. For it must be said: the worst thing that can happen to a child before the age of nine is for them to gain a mechanical understanding of a locomotive, a streetcar, or the like. You will understand that such things can flow into the overall constitution—even into physical life—if you consider other aspects of life. Just consider, for example, what it means in the life of several generations when a people adopts a language that it had not spoken up to a certain point in time. Why, for example, are the Bulgarians a Slavic people? Racial-wise, they are not. Racial-wise, they are related to the Finns and the Huns. They are a kind of Mongolian-Tatar people. But they adopted a Slavic language early on and thereby became a Slavic people. What they adopted through language and external culture has become an integral part of their very being. And I have met people who regard the Bulgarian element as one of the purest Slavic elements, which—anthropologically and historically speaking—it is certainly not. Very often, people fail to gain a deeper understanding of just how profoundly what is imparted to children—especially in terms of their mental and emotional development—affects even their physical constitution.

[ 15 ] And here one must say: a child who has just completed the process of losing its baby teeth would perceive it as something like spikes penetrating its being if one were to introduce it to conceptual thinking—particularly regarding that which has emerged from the inanimate, from the inorganic. The child already feels strangely affected by what is drawn from the inanimate. Therefore, when educating a child at this age, one must possess an artistic sensibility to truly bring everything to life. The teacher must breathe life into things; the teacher must let the plants speak, let the animals act morally; the teacher must be able to transform everything into a fairy tale, a fable, or a legend. And here something emerges that is particularly important to take into account.

[ 16 ] Complacent teachers and educators—what will they do when faced with this pedagogical demand? They go to the libraries, gather books containing legends, folktales, animal stories, and the like, learn them, and then present them to the class. Of course, one must have substitutes everywhere in life, but that is not the ideal. The ideal is that, when the teacher is so well prepared —for this requires particularly thorough preparation—that what emerges from within him, as his most individual creation, is the very conversation between this plant and that one; that the fairy tale about the lily and the rose is conceived by the teacher himself and presented to the children; that the conversation between the sun and the moon is conceived entirely individually by the teacher and unfolded before the children. Why is that so? Well, I’d like to use a metaphor to explain it. If you tell a child what you’ve learned from books, then you speak like a withered person—no matter how lively you may be otherwise—you still speak, in an intangible way, like a withered person; much as if one did not have living skin but were covered with parchment, for one always carries within oneself a remnant of what has been learned in a purely historical way. In contrast, what one devises oneself still possesses the power to grow, still possesses fresh life; this is what has an effect on the child.

[ 17 ] Therefore, the urge to bring the entire plant and animal world, as well as the world of the sun and stars, to life through fairy tales must come from within the teacher himself, who wishes to be an educator of children of this age. And he will actually have a positive effect on the child if, first thing in the morning—after having just conceived what he is about to present in a task that is, after all, demanding—he goes to school in such a way that one can already see from his stride that he is eager to share it with his class of children. The fact is that the story he has devised is not yet complete until it has reached its conclusion through his seeing the satisfied and joyful faces of the children beaming back at him.

[ 18 ] Everything the child learns from plants, animals, minerals, the sun, the moon, mountains, and rivers should, in fact, be poured into this form by the time the child reaches the age of nine; for the child becomes one with the world. The world and the child, the child and the world—they are one during these years of life.

[ 19 ] But with this marked, profound change, another one occurs. The child becomes a distinct being in its own right. It learns to distinguish itself from the world, and this creates both the opportunity and the necessity to introduce the child to nature and the environment. This is where what must be characterized as the fundamental difference between introducing a child to the plant world and to the animal world comes into play. Human beings need to be introduced to these two realms of nature in entirely different ways. Admittedly, a child can be introduced to both the plant world and the animal world from the ages of ten to twelve; but the approach to the plant world differs from that to the animal world.

[ 20 ] Presenting the plant at this stage of life to the child as a separate being, torn from the earth, is actually a terrible thing. There must be a clear sense that the plant, on its own, torn from the ground, is not an independent being at all. One must perceive the entire plant world in the same way that, for example, a strand of human hair must be viewed and perceived in relation to the entire human organism. A strand of human hair lying there, torn out, is, after all, nonsense; it is not reality; it can never exist through the forces inherent in it. Likewise, a plant is something that cannot exist if it is torn from the ground and stands there on its own. The plant is part of the face of the earth. The plant and the earth belong together in the first place. We will see shortly that something else also takes place, but the plant and the earth belong together in the first place. Therefore, it is also necessary, as far as possible, to unfold a perception-based observation before the children, viewing the plant and the earth as belonging together, so as to awaken a sense of how the root system belongs to the soil and its specific nature. The child need not, however, have an abstract, intellectual mental image, but rather a sensory mental image of how the root system changes in dry soil versus moist soil, and how it differs when rocks tower near the plant’s growth or when the sea is nearby. The child must first learn to view the plant in close connection with the soil. And all vegetation must be a part of that which emerges from the earth.

[ 21 ] And one must evoke a sense, through observation, of the contrast between the root-like, which belongs to the earth, and the flower-like and fruit-bearing, which is driven forth by the sun. One must lead the child from the earth to the sun by presenting the flower-like to the child. The child must develop a sense of how the flowering aspect unfolds through the warming embrace of the sun, and how, in the process of flowering and fruiting, the plant gradually emancipates itself from the soil. The earth, plant growth, and the sun’s influence on the earth are inextricably linked, and they must grow together in the child’s perception. One might say that the child must have such a mental image of the plant world that, if one describes a plant to the child without reference to the soil and the sun, the child feels an inner distress roughly equivalent to that experienced when the plant is torn up.

[ 22 ] In this regard, too, the educational system must by no means be viewed as something abstract in and of itself, but rather as embedded within the entire social organism. One must have a sense of what it means for the development of humanity that, for a long time now, large numbers of people have been drawn into the city, that generation after generation of urban youth grows up there—as one can learn from people who have moved to the city—to the point where they can no longer distinguish the wheat from the chaff. |

[ 23 ] It may seem grotesque, but one must insist time and again: a person who has not learned to distinguish rye from wheat is not a complete human being. And one can even go further: a person who has only learned in the city to distinguish rye from wheat based on the appearance of the ear and the rye and wheat grains has not yet attained the ideal. Only the one who has stood on the ground where rye and wheat grow and has learned to distinguish rye from wheat right there—only that person has truly experienced what is right. As teachers, we should avoid going on botanical excursions and then returning to the classroom with a basket full of specimens to lay out the plants. Rather, we should take the children outside and, if possible, help them understand the plant world within its real-life context—in connection with the earth, the sun’s rays, and life itself. In this way, we can find, in a very simple and natural way, the transition to something else, which is extraordinarily important.

[ 24 ] When a child begins to form a mental image of what a potato actually is, it means an awful lot. After all, the potato is not a root; it is a tuberous stem, a tuberous shoot. The dry soil on which the potato depends draws what is meant to sprout upward back into the earth. From the foliage, one should be able to recognize how long the plant remains connected to the soil as it grows upward, and how long the soil continues to exert its influence on the plant. One should be able to sense this earthy way in which the potato grows into the dry soil. And in turn, one should be able to sense how, in fact, the somewhat moist soil—in conjunction with the sun’s rays already sinking downward—shapes the autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale.

[ 25 ] If one considers in this way what grows out of the earth as if from an organism—naturally differentiated according to the various distinctions in the earth’s surface—then one finds, in a naive way, the transition to a geography in harmony with nature. It grows of its own accord. And the other elements that come into play in geography are connected to what plant life is. How do people today sometimes speak of the Earth? People today sometimes speak of the Earth as if it produced no plants at all. They imagine the Earth as a sphere floating in outer space; the forces of gravity act in such a way that their intensity decreases with the square of the distance, and this is how the celestial bodies interact with one another. This process operates in a purely mathematical-mechanical way. But who has the right to separate this mathematical-dynamic aspect of gravity abstractly from what is actually embedded within the Earth: the unfolding plant world! When one speaks of the Earth’s cosmic immanence, one must bring to life not only the purely mathematical-mechanical relationships of gravity and so on, but also that which is present in the Earth through the plant’s root system.

[ 26 ] What matters most in this regard is that the lessons be filled with vibrant life. Just as the plant world must be related to the earthly realm, so too must the animal world be related to human beings. One will notice, by evoking in children mental images of the plant world as I have described them, that it is precisely through the plant world that children develop questions about the “why” and “how” of the world. It is truly much more wholesome for a child’s mind to develop questions about the “why” and “how” through the plant world than, for example, through the mineral world or the mechanical world. Just as one should, so to speak, develop a sense of causality—a sense of cause and effect—through plants, which are bound to the earth, so too should one develop comparison and analogy—which should always occupy a corresponding place in life—through the animal world.

[ 27 ] Now, to ensure we understand each other correctly, I would like to elaborate on a certain idea—one intended solely for us adults—which must then be implemented in various ways at school and adapted to the understanding of children between the ages of ten and twelve, but which, in fact, is given far too little attention today.

[ 28 ] If one considers human beings—I would say—morphologically, physiologically, and so on, the following may initially strike one. Let us consider the human head, starting with its external form: it is spherical. If we then look inside, we find the gray matter of the brain, still not very distinct in its differentiation from what are essentially cellular ganglia, and further inward, only then the fibrous white matter. — We look at this human head structure, and we can compare it to the animal kingdom. But where must we look for something in the animal world that we can compare to the human head structure? We must look among all the lower animals. In the human head, however, everything is differentiated. But the main feature that is also essential to the human head—a soft inner mass surrounded by a shell—is still present in its undifferentiated state among the lower animals. Anyone who observes nature with an open mind will find, precisely in the shelled animal, the simple, primitive counterpart to the human head, and will be able to relate the structure of the human head to that of the lower animals. Viewed from within, an oyster is much closer to the human head than a monkey. If you look at a slimy animal surrounded by a shell, that is actually the simplest form for a human head.

[ 29 ] If we now turn to the human thoracic organs—those that are primarily under the control of the spine—we are led to higher animals, such as fish. In fish, what do we find there? The head is hardly anything other than a slightly differentiated continuation of what is connected to the spine everywhere else. The entire fish is a vertebrate. And if we examine the organization of the fish as a being situated in the middle of the animal kingdom, we must compare it to the human lymphatic system, to the middle human.

[ 30 ] And as we move up to the higher animals, we cannot help but compare what develops in them with the human metabolic-limb system. Look at the lion, look at the camel: everything there is governed by the specific organization of the limb-metabolic body. Thus we arrive at a remarkable classification of the animal kingdom in relation to human organization:

[ 31 ] Head organization — lower animals
Rhythmic organization — intermediate animals
Metabolic-limb organization — higher animals

[ 32 ] Only such an insight provides a true perspective on evolution. Human development originated from something that later became the head. But in very early times, when environmental conditions were different, what later became the head in humans developed, and humans have had ample opportunity to evolve from the time when, like an oyster, they were dependent on impulses from their environment, to the point where the head sits like a parasite on the rest of the organism and draws from the rest of the organism what the oyster still has to draw from its environment. They have set the other parts aside. He has replaced the earthly environment with his head, which he has attached. You can still trace this in embryology today. When one looks at human embryology, one must say that human beings have undergone a long evolution with regard to their head. This organization of the head originated at a stage at which lower shellfish still stand today; only they have fallen behind in evolution. They must develop under less favorable external conditions. Consequently, they do not reach the density of the head; they remain at the stage of the slimy body and the shell-like environment. Under entirely different earthly conditions today, they represent what human beings themselves were in terms of head organization under earlier conditions. And the fish organism appeared later in Earth’s evolution than the human organism and encountered a different external environment. Humanity had already reached the stage where it could draw the impulses—which the fish must draw from its environment—from its own rhythmic organism. Thus, the organization of the intermediate animals was added to human evolution, which had advanced to a certain point. And finally, when human beings had already developed their limb-metabolic organism in the modern sense—so that metabolism had become differentiated, leaving only its remnants in the head and chest organs—the higher animals were added.

[ 33 ] In this way, one will come to realize that the theory of descent is correct for humans, but only when one considers their head. Physically speaking, in terms of the organization of the head, humans are descended from ancestors who bear a distant resemblance to today’s lowest animals, yet are different from them because these lower animals develop under different conditions today. In terms of their intermediate organization, humans are descended from beings who were already well on the path to becoming human and who bear a resemblance to the organization of fish. But the fish came too late. They had to leave the head completely undeveloped; because they had not developed it earlier, it was no longer possible to develop the head in the appropriate way—especially since they had confined themselves to the liquid element. And so one arrives at a comprehensive view, at a theory of descent that corresponds to reality; whereas, if one considers the whole human being without taking its threefold constitution into account, one arrives at a one-sided theory of descent that is very insightful and very astute, but which simply does not stand up to thorough observation. So that one can say: What we find in the animal kingdom is, everywhere, the one-sided development of some human organ system. Oysters are one-sided cephalopods, fish are one-sided thoracic animals, and higher mammals in particular are one-sided metabolic-limb animals. We understand every animal form when we regard it as a one-sided development of a human organ system.

[ 34 ] People once had a sense of such a thing at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century; but only that sense was correct. People lacked sufficient knowledge to actually develop these ideas into a concrete reality. One of the much-despised German natural philosophers, Oken—who was, however, a very witty man—made a grotesque statement that is easy to laugh at today, but which arose from a certain correct intuition: that the human tongue is an octopus. Yes, certainly, the tongue is not an octopus. It is very easy to form an opinion on this. But the general intuition that one must look down to the lower animals if one wishes to recognize the forms of the human head lay at the heart of this assertion.

[ 35 ] Well, what I have explained to you here is simply for our guidance. However, this can certainly be applied to what a child can understand. One can observe all sorts of aspects of the human being in terms of morphology—that is, in terms of form—in the presence of the child, and then draw an analogy with this or that animal form; and one can certainly awaken in the child the sense that the entire animal kingdom is a human being spread out; the human being is a compendium of the entire animal kingdom. - In this way, one brings the animal kingdom closer to the human being, just as one has brought the plant kingdom closer to the earth, and one awakens in the child a healthy sense of the world precisely by taking into account, as it were, the level of transition between animal and plant—descending to the earth in the case of plants, and ascending to the human being in the case of animals. In this way, the soul attunes itself appropriately to its surroundings through sensation, having learned to distinguish itself from them by the time it reaches the age of nine. And what really matters is not that one imparts all sorts of knowledge to the child, but that one prepares the child for a proper sense of the world.

[ 36 ] What do we actually do sometimes in life today—not just for children, but also for the educators themselves? Terrible things. Just think for a moment that in exams, we demand things from teachers that we really shouldn’t be demanding at all, because they are, after all, unnecessary burdens to carry around. Most of the time today, what is tested is something the teacher—since we now have a general encyclopedia—can simply take off the shelf and look up by consulting the relevant volume. It is not important to demand such things in an exam setting. What is important, however, is to arrive at the conviction that this is a person who can enter the school in the way that must result from a genuine understanding of human nature.

[ 37 ] It is particularly important to adopt the correct approach to the development of memory during childhood. We must not forget that, up until the change of teeth, memory—the ability to recall—is most closely linked to organic development. What the child can easily recall during this period is influenced by forces that are simultaneously at work in growth and nutrition. Until the change of teeth, the child is a unified whole in terms of mental-spiritual and physical-bodily forces. We can therefore make the gravest mistakes if we try to organize all sorts of activities for a child before the change of teeth in an attempt to artificially strengthen their memory.

[ 38 ] In this regard, we must be clear that, especially when it comes to the development of memory before the child’s teeth begin to fall out, the child is an imitative being; we must do what is right in the child’s environment—and indeed, only what is right—so that the child, depending on his or her growth potential and nutritional needs, will develop his or her memory in the fullest sense of the word. Physical care—which we will discuss later—and the maintenance of physical health are, during this period, also the best care for the memory and the ability to recall.

[ 39 ] The defining characteristic of our materialistic age is that people want to begin as early as possible to impart all sorts of educational concepts to children in an artificial way. For example, they want to cultivate memory in a psychological and spiritual way even before the age of seven. They even want to go further, and this shows just how far off track a materialistic age is in this regard. There are mothers—I can tell you this from experience—who not only ask how to educate a child before the change of teeth in a way that is normally only considered for a later age, but who also ask how to educate the child before birth, while it is still in the embryonic state. People want all sorts of instructions on this. All one can say to them is: Look at yourself as a mother; treat yourself well, and then the child—whose formative powers you must ultimately leave to the Creator—will flourish in the right way.

[ 40 ] This is a view that, while expressed in radical terms, seems entirely justified in the face of certain sophistical questions regarding certain educational principles that belong only to later stages of life. On the other hand, one must be clear that with the onset of tooth replacement, the soul-spiritual aspect becomes so emancipated that one must also develop educational principles for what has now been emancipated along with it: the power of recollection, the memory. One must be clear, in fact, that during the school-age years, something must be done to ensure that memory grows stronger and stronger. It must be developed systematically. If memory is developed in such a way that it is overloaded—or is intended to be strengthened through overload—it will simply grow weaker and weaker. Then one raises a rigid person who adopts certain prejudices about life and cannot move beyond them. If one educates a person without taking the development of their memory into account at all, one fails to provide them with something that, in a certain sense, has a strengthening effect on their body. In a person for whom no consideration is given to the development of memory during school-age years, one fosters a tendency toward all sorts of inflammatory conditions in later adolescence. One then induces a tendency for such a person to be easily prone to inflammation and colds in general.

[ 41 ] These things are interconnected in such a way that one must consider the physical and the mental-spiritual aspects together. Therefore, the development of memory is tied to a very specific educational approach. One must neither do too much nor too little in this regard. One must not have the child memorize things haphazardly in order to strengthen their memory; nor, however, should one completely overlook the importance of memorization. And in fact, one can still take the development of memory into account in this regard without harming the lively understanding that one wishes to cultivate in the child.

[ 42 ] Let us see, for example, how certain things provide us with the tools to do this. We can go through the first numerical relationships with the child in the manner described in the last lecture; we can introduce the child to the relationships—the subtractive, divisive, additive, and multiplicative relationships between numbers—in such a way that the matter is clear to the child, so that the child has a certain understanding of it, in the manner described yesterday. But we still have the opportunity to help the child learn the multiplication tables by heart. For the more complex numerical relationships that come later, there is still the possibility of memorizing the multiplication tables, provided they are properly related to numerical relationships.

[ 43 ] In this regard, one can really go too far with so-called “hands-on instruction.” The calculator has been introduced. I don’t want to be fanatical in any direction; it may well have its merits; after all, everything in life has its justification from a certain point of view. But much of what can be achieved with sophisticated calculators can just as easily be done using one’s ten fingers and the number of students in the class, without resorting to complicated calculators. Please don’t take it the wrong way, but when I walk into a school and see a calculator, I feel, in relation to the spiritual-soul aspect, just as I would in a medieval torture chamber in relation to the physical-bodily aspect! The point is really that we must not reduce these things to the external and mechanical in order to escape the seemingly internal mechanical aspect of memorization.

[ 44 ] Well, in this regard, we face a particularly difficult task in the Waldorf school because we truly want to educate in a way that is in harmony with the soul—that is, we want to confine the actual academic work to school hours and have the child do as little “school-like” work as possible outside of school hours. This stems from a different principle. Certainly, we should develop a sense of duty in the child. We will discuss later how this can be developed. But it is particularly harmful when the situation at school is such that the teacher expects something from the student and the student does not deliver. Homework—and home-based learning in general—tend to encourage this too much.

[ 45 ] Parents often complain to us that their children have absolutely nothing to do outside of school hours. But here—and this is quite clear to anyone who can experience spiritual realities with an open mind—we must take into account that an excessive amount of homework leads to a situation where some children may take on too much work, while others simply become lax and fail to do their assignments. After all, sometimes children simply cannot do everything that is expected of them at school! The worst thing that can happen at school, however, is when students fail to carry out what the teacher expects of them. Therefore, it is better to be more sparing in what we expect of children than to risk them failing to carry out what we want them to do. In this regard, the homework assigned—whether for memory training or other purposes—must be handled with particular tact. The development of memory depends on an extraordinarily subtle educational tact and plays a particularly important role in establishing the proper relationship between the educator and the class being taught.

[ 46 ] Tomorrow we will discuss in detail how we deal with memory overload and the overly casual approach to memory development.

FAQs

[ 47 ] Dr. Steiner: Since we’ve received a number of questions, perhaps I should address them first. If there are any further questions, we can certainly talk about them in the near future and get together for another discussion like this.

[ 48 ] Regarding the first question:

[ 49 ] One can certainly believe that extending instruction in a single subject over a longer period of time has certain drawbacks, and one cannot deny that it is difficult to keep a child’s attention focused on a single subject for an extended period. Indeed, there are certain aspects—which are now widely accepted in modern theoretical educational thought—that seem to argue against such an extended focus on a single subject over a longer period. Nevertheless, the decision had to be made to introduce such a method in the Waldorf school. The point is that the very results of recent, more experimental-psychological research—which, after all, give rise to such views—are based on a failure to address what is truly human, what is profoundly human.

[ 50 ] Why, in fact, do we conduct psychological experiments? I have no objection to experimental psychology insofar as it is justified within its field, and within certain limits I am happy to acknowledge this justification, but I must ask the question: Why do we conduct experiments on the psyche at all in modern times?

[ 51 ] We conduct experiments on the soul because, at some point in the course of human development, we reached a point where we could no longer build a bridge—no longer build a direct, elemental bridge—from soul to soul. We no longer possess the original insight into what a child needs at any given moment, how a child becomes tired at any given moment, and so on, and so we seek to acquire—in an external way—the knowledge that we no longer possess with full presence of mind, nor from person to person. We ask: How does a child become tired after engaging in this or that activity for a while?—and we compile statistical data and the like. As I said, we have, in a sense, invented this entire approach, this method, in order to learn indirectly through human means what we can no longer perceive directly.

[ 52 ] Now, for anyone who must consider this direct relationship between the teacher’s soul and the child’s soul, there is something else of far greater importance than, for example, the question of whether teaching a single subject to children for an extended period might demand too much of their attention. So if I have understood the question correctly, the questioner might think that by varying the lessons—by allowing attention to shift to something else after a relatively short time—something is gained. Well, yes, certainly, something is gained—that cannot be denied. But the matters of life should not be calculated mathematically; rather, one must be able to decide, through a certain intuition, whether what is gained in this way is of greater value in the overall development of the individual than what is lost. If one spends two hours on a single subject, it is certainly not the same as spending one hour on one subject and the second hour on another, or even tackling the matter in shorter intervals. But even though the child becomes tired in a certain way and one must take this fatigue into account, it is better for the child’s overall development to proceed in this concentrated manner than to artificially interrupt the economical familiarization with a particular subject and then fill the soul with something else in the time that follows.

[ 53 ] What must be given the greatest importance in the Waldorf school is, after all, teaching and educating in an economical way—in a spiritual-economic way. And if one organizes things in such a way that one actually follows broad themes throughout the entire period—say, by working through a topic over the course of two hours—following broad themes to which attention can be directed without becoming weary, or at least without becoming excessively weary, and if one then counteracts the possibility of fatigue by, so to speak, running parallel to the main theme something that varies that main theme—all of which will, of course, arise intuitively for the true educator—then one achieves more than if one organizes the lesson according to a different perspective and reaps the benefits of that other perspective.

[ 54 ] In theory, of course, there is much to be said for and against these things, but this is by no means a matter of a preference for one theory or another; rather, it is simply a question of: What is better for the overall development of human beings?

[ 55 ] And there is something else to consider here. It is true that a child becomes fatigued in a certain way when concentrating on one object for a prolonged period. But there is so little understanding today of the healthy and unhealthy tendencies of the human being that people actually regard it as a mistake when a child becomes fatigued in a certain way. Fatigue is just as healthy as being refreshed. Life follows a rhythm, and it is not at all a matter of engaging the child for half an hour, then—which does not actually alleviate the inner fatigue—allowing the child perhaps five minutes to recover, and then cramming something else in. This merely creates the illusion that one has taken the fatigue into account. In reality, one has not taken the fatigue into account at all; rather, one has merely poured something else into the already fatigued soul, instead of allowing that which is organically connected to this fatigue—since the fatigue stems precisely from it—to subside.

[ 56 ] In short, one must delve much deeper into the recesses of the soul than is often customary today in order to realize that the method of prolonged concentration on a single subject is, after all, of great value for a person’s overall development.

[ 57 ] As I said, one can certainly arrive at the conclusion, based on certain theories, that variation in an object represents an advantage; but from a certain point of view, the absolute ideal must be ruled out of life altogether. An absolute ideal cannot be realized anywhere in life, and everywhere the question is simply this: which is the relatively best? And there one will also see that, with the brief, schedule-driven treatment of individual subjects, one is absolutely unable to give children something that connects deeply enough with their entire mental, emotional, and physical makeup.

[ 58 ] I might add the following to this: if, for example, one were compelled to staff a school—in accordance with the principles I have been attempting to expound in these lectures—with a whole host of boring teachers, then one would undoubtedly have to organize instruction into shorter time periods. It all comes down to the fact that one must simply say: with boring teachers, it is better to have lessons in short time periods; but with teachers who have a stimulating effect on the students, extended lessons are definitely more beneficial.

[ 59 ] As you can see, what matters most to me is not to become fanatical in any particular direction, but to take the circumstances into account in every situation. That said, it is important to choose teachers who are, as far as possible, not boring, in order to ensure good instruction.

[ 60 ] Regarding the second question:

[ 61 ] It may be that one can cite many reasons why eurythmy is a transformation from one form of expression to another, and not a new form of expression; but when it comes to the arts—and to everything in life where the arts come into play—the point is to focus on the “how,” not the “what.” To my mind, for example, it makes no clear sense to say that sculpture, music, language, rhythm, and so on are means of expression, and that it is the idea that expresses everything. I mean, it can never be a matter of going this far into the abstract when one is dealing with life. Of course, if one wants to abstract—if one wants to move toward unity in an abstract way—one can find various ways to express this unity; but in life, the various ways of expressing a thing are, in fact, always something new, something different. It is the case that, for example, in the sense of Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis, the colored flower petal is, in abstract unity, the same as the green plant leaf. One is the metamorphosis of the other. And yet, from other points of view, one is, in turn, something entirely different from the other. And whether eurythmy is a new form of expression or the transformation of one form of expression into another is, in the final analysis, of no consequence at all. What matters is this: In the course of human evolution, we have come to a point—through spoken language and, in a similar way, though this is less noticeable, through singing—where sound, language, and song are increasingly concentrated on serving as a means of expression for that which works through the human mind.

[ 62 ] That is certainly true; I would say it is, again, a radical statement, but from a certain point of view it is nonetheless correct. Today, the whole human being is no longer captured by what can be expressed through language. Language is oriented toward thought; in recent times, it has taken on a conceptual character for all peoples. As a result, ordinary spoken language expresses what a person reveals out of their own egoism. Eurythmy, on the other hand, goes back specifically to the volitional element and thereby to the whole human being, to the complete human being. Through eurythmy, what emerges is what a person reveals by placing themselves within the entire macrocosm. And while, for example, in certain primeval times, gestures and facial expressions were always linked to speech—especially when people felt artistically inspired—to the extent that in certain ancient languages there was only a single word for “word” and “gesture,” and one could not distinguish between the two at all, today word and gesture have drifted far apart. And that is why there is today a legitimate need to restore human expression so that it once again becomes an expression of the whole human being—something into which the volitional, and thereby the macrocosmic, is once again interwoven. |

[ 63 ] That is what I believe must be taken into account; it seems to me that, in general, people today tend to theorize too much about everything, whereas it is precisely today that there is an urgent need to focus on the practical aspects of life.

[ 64 ] Anyone who views human existence impartially from this perspective knows that there is a “yes” and a “no” for everything. Everything can be proven and disproven. However, in the end, the primary value lies not in proving and disproving, in defining and distinguishing, but in what impels us—in that which truly gives life. You may think what you will regarding the formulation of such assertions, my esteemed audience, but anthroposophical research provides insight into the evolution of humanity, and humanity is tending toward overcoming the rational, intellectualistic element and drawing closer to the soul, to life, which unfolds not in definitions but in forms.

[ 65 ] That is why one can always say: Ultimately, it makes no difference whether one regards eurythmy as the transformation of one mode into another, or whether one regards it as a new mode. To me, this seems just as unimportant as the following: When I arrived at the University of Vienna, the professors who were required to have titles held a very high one—they were called “Hofrat.” If one then went over to Germany, they were called “Geheimrat.” People attached a certain importance to these distinctions. But what mattered to me was looking at the person, and I was completely indifferent to whatever external label they bore. And it almost seems to me—forgive me, I don’t mean to say anything bad by this—it almost seems to me that when one proceeds with philosophical definitions and distinguishes between the transition from one mode to another or, I don’t even know how to put it, the concept of a new mode.

[ 66 ] Regarding the third question:

[ 67 ] I’m not entirely sure what the question is supposed to mean, but I think it can probably be understood from a certain perspective of Protestant consciousness. The fact is that, as I have already said, discipline is best maintained by allowing it to emerge naturally from the school’s overall practice. I have already mentioned how discipline at the Waldorf School has improved in a truly extraordinary way over the course of more than two years now. I have also cited evidence of this. — It might seem that, out of a certain personal inclination toward this “sense of sin,” one might hope to instill something of it in the child as well when teaching the child such a thing. But precisely this—let us now consider this truly without religious prejudice—precisely this teaching of such an understanding of sin would instill something in the child’s soul that would remain throughout their entire life as a certain insecurity. I would say—if I were to express myself in psychoanalytic terms—that one would create a hidden province of the soul, which would then create a kind of vacuum in real life, a kind of province of the soul that, in a sense, always contains a void within itself and signifies a weakness in the face of a more energetic engagement with life.

[ 68 ] If I have understood the question correctly, that is all I can say about it.

[ 69 ] Regarding the fourth question:

[ 70 ] I believe that this question is answered by what I said in the first part of my lecture this morning. One cannot generally say that boys at this age go through a crisis different from the one I spoke of this morning. It would be far too simplistic to categorize the lives of children at this age if one were to speak of all boys becoming turbulent at this stage. One may also be subject to certain misconceptions in this regard. For if that transformation I spoke of this morning is not properly guided by the teacher or educator, then the children—and not just the boys, but the girls as well—do indeed become very turbulent; they become so restless and inwardly resistant that it is difficult to manage them.

[ 71 ] What takes place at this age varies greatly depending on the children’s temperament, but it must be taken into account. If it is taken into account, then one cannot make a statement such as the one in the first sentence in such general terms, and one can instead say much more accurately: If children are not guided in their overall development—so that they become inwardly unwilling, unstable, and the like—then this is indeed the case, particularly if the teacher fails to properly address the specific transition that occurs between the ages of nine and ten. But this transition must be taken into account under all circumstances by the appropriate teacher and educator.

[ 72 ] Regarding the fifth question:

[ 73 ] That is quite correct, and I believe that all that is necessary is simply to answer this question in the affirmative. Of course, a certain degree of tact will be needed in raising and teaching children regarding what is taught to them about human beings between the ages of ten and twelve. If one considers what is possible to convey to the child’s understanding regarding the nature of human beings in such relationships, then it can certainly be affirmed that it is necessary to address the human being’s own life in these various relationships.

[ 74 ] Regarding the sixth question:

[ 75 ] In response to this, I would like to say that, with regard to this question, we must proceed by taking the possibilities into account, so that we will, in any case, take an ever-greater interest in the development of the world and in developing such methods of a more penetrating—for the supersensible view of humanity is at the same time a more penetrating one—view of humanity. Of course, this won’t be possible everywhere; but wherever it is feasible, it should indeed be done. This is not only beneficial for teachers and educators, who can observe more about a person than what mere outward appearance reveals; it is also of particular benefit, for example, to physicians. Thus, I believe we must say—without risking any misunderstandings—that: Today, when human nature has advanced so far in the course of human development that, in fact, only prejudices stand in the way, we should, wherever possible, develop such methods. But that already implies that it is, of course, desirable. It is indeed the case that much more could be achieved in this direction if old prejudices did not stand in the way like stones, and if people were not—I would say—held back by intellectualistic prejudices from embarking on such paths in the proper way, as they are, albeit only in their initial stages, described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*

[ 76 ] Regarding the seventh question:

[ 77 ] In Waldorf schools, mathematics is certainly included in what I have called “main lessons” and plays a role within them entirely in accordance with the child’s development. It is by no means relegated to any lessons that would take place outside of the main lessons. The question is based somewhat on a misunderstanding.