The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Educational and Teaching Methods Based on Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Yesterday, I sought to show how the educational philosophy and practice that can develop on an anthroposophical foundation is entirely based on an intimate understanding of human nature—and thus also on an intimate understanding of the developing human being, the child. I have already attempted to show how the developing human being can, in a sense, be understood as a temporal organism, so that, in every year of the child’s life—as we teach and nurture them—we can always keep in mind the entirety of human life and, as it were, plant within the child a kind of soul-spiritual seed that will then bear fruit for happiness, for security, and for the practical living of life throughout their entire earthly existence.

[ 2 ] We have initially focused on that stage of human life—from birth until the teeth are replaced—during which the human being is entirely an imitative creature. One must create a mental image of the human being being connected to his or her surroundings in an extraordinarily intimate way. So that, in a sense, what takes place in external events—but especially in everything that is done by people, and even what is felt and thought by people—all of this appears to the child in such a way that the child grows into these events of its environment through imitation. This relationship—this connection between the human being and its environment—has a kind of opposite pole in what then comes to light in the course of human life during sexual maturity.

[ 3 ] In today’s more or less materialistic age, there is much talk about human sexual maturity. This phenomenon alone is usually portrayed as an isolated occurrence, whereas, upon unbiased observation, it is in truth merely the result of a complete metamorphosis of the entire human life at that particular stage of life. At this stage of life, a person not only develops erotic feelings that are more or less imbued with emotional, spiritual, or physical elements; from this stage onward, a person begins to face the world by forming judgments directly—judging from the perspective of their own personality—and expressing themselves through sympathy and antipathy. It is only now, in essence, that a person is fully set out into the world. It is only then that a person matures enough to give themselves over to the world in such a way that independent thinking, independent feeling, and independent judgment of the world take place within them.

[ 4 ] The period from the time of tooth replacement to sexual maturity is a stage of life that is primarily built upon a natural sense of authority toward teachers and educators. During this important stage of life—which, in a sense, lies between two polar opposites: childhood, in which the individual, without feeling at all like a subject in their own right, is wholly devoted to objectivity, and between adulthood, in which a person distinguishes themselves more or less sharply from the external world with their entire inner being as a subject through what, in the broadest sense, can be called sympathy or antipathy—in short, the various expressions and manifestations of love—between these two stages of human life lies the period that corresponds precisely to a child’s compulsory elementary school age. Between these two stages of life, between these two poles, we must create the transition through school education and school instruction.

[ 5 ] At both stages of life—in childhood and in adulthood—a person has a certain fixed center of gravity in their life: in childhood, this center is in the world; in adulthood, it is within themselves. The stage in between—the actual school-age period—is the one in which a person, with their inner life and indeed as a whole human being, is in a more precarious state of balance—a balance to which the teacher or educator actually belongs.

[ 6 ] Essentially, the teacher—the educator—is the world to a child of elementary school age. What constitutes the world does not manifest itself through arbitrariness, but simply through the natural laws of human development; it manifests itself through what the teacher, what the educator, is to the child. The teacher, the educator, is the embodiment of the world for the child. And blessed is the child who, before entering adulthood and taking an independent stand in the world with their own judgment, their own will, and their own feelings, is first given an understanding of the world through someone in whom the world is reflected in this appropriate way!

[ 7 ] This is a deeply felt educational principle of the pedagogy and didactics that are to be based on anthroposophy. With this educational principle, the aim is to gain such an intimate understanding of the child’s development during the elementary school years—every year, indeed, one might say every month, every week—that the curriculum and educational goals are derived directly from the human being. I would like to say: Knowledge of the human being—true, intimate knowledge of the human being—means, at the same time, the ability to say in every instance: This must be presented to the child at the appropriate age, or even at the appropriate stage of life.

[ 8 ] If we consider that up until about the age of seven—when a child is actually supposed to start elementary school—the child was an imitative being who, through his or her will, sought to integrate completely into his or her surroundings; that, naturally, all intellectual activity based on the self-activity of the soul had to take a back seat; that even feeling itself had to take a back seat to a greater or lesser extent, which, after all, only comes into play as empathy with the surroundings, and that everything takes on a volitional character in an imitative being—then we will understand how much of this volitional character, as the child’s fundamental nature, is already present when the child enters elementary school around the time of tooth replacement.

[ 9 ] We must therefore, above all, be mindful to take as our starting point the education and instruction of the will. This then provides the foundation for proceeding from the artistic; that writing is not initially introduced to the child in such a way that the act of forming letters—which is, in essence, already alien to human nature within our present-day civilization—is presented directly to the child; rather, the child is introduced to painting and drawing, which appear as a continuation of the child’s natural will, and then what is to lead to writing is drawn out from within this painting and drawing.

[ 10 ] One will immediately notice two very different tendencies among the children. These two different tendencies should definitely be observed. For the way they develop can reveal something essential regarding the child’s well-being or, conversely, their downfall. When it comes to writing, there are two types of children. This becomes particularly evident when one guides them from a form of drawing toward writing. One type of child learns to write, so to speak, in such a way that it remains a form of drawing—that writing is done, I might say, with the eye—that the child observes every stroke it makes, that it works on the creation of the written text with a certain sense of beauty, and that something drawing-like and artistic finds its way into the writing. Other children manage only to put the written characters on paper out of an organic mechanism, with a certain sense of necessity. Even in writing instruction—which is often conducted according to few pedagogical principles, particularly with older people who still need it—the focus is usually solely on having the person simply place the written characters on the paper in this mechanical, internally driven, and necessary manner. As a result, a person develops their very distinct handwriting. Just as a person has gestures of which they are actually quite unaware, so too do they have a handwriting of which they remain entirely unaware. Such a person, in a sense, no longer receives any echo from their writing. Their eye does not linger contentedly on their writing; nothing artistic or graphic is carried forward into the writing.

[ 11 ] Every child should actually be guided to incorporate this artistic, drawing-like quality into their handwriting; so that the eye always rests on the sheet of paper being written on, allowing the eye to take in what is being written. So that a person does not write their handwriting solely out of an inner, mechanical necessity, but also experiences, so to speak, the echo of their own writing, of their own letters. Through this—and people today may still regard this as a paradox, but it is nonetheless true—a certain love for their surroundings and a certain sense of responsibility toward them are cultivated in the child to a much greater degree. A certain attentiveness to everything else we do in life is a necessary consequence of this way of learning to write, in which one learns to write not only with the hand but also with the eye.

[ 12 ] And one should not underestimate how these intimate aspects permeate all of human life. Some people who, later in life, lack a certain sense of responsibility—or even a certain loving devotion to those around them—might have been helped if they had learned to write properly.

[ 13 ] When educating and teaching, one must by no means overlook the intimate aspects. Because anthroposophy seeks to shed light on human nature in a loving way—not merely in a theoretical sense—and to recognize the reality of all individual human expressions from their innermost soul and spiritual roots, it naturally comes to add this genuine educational practice to the general principles of pedagogy and didactics. Then, when one is mindful of incorporating the will into writing instruction, writing instruction can bear the kind of fruit I have just described.

[ 14 ] We then move on to reading instruction, which is based more on intuition and is actually meant to develop out of writing. Reading is, if I may put it this way, more of an observation; writing is active participation. A child’s education should be based on the element of will, on active engagement, not merely on observation.

[ 15 ] These are the three stages that should actually be present throughout education, in instruction from approximately the seventh to the fourteenth year: first, all instruction should be based on activity. It should gradually lead to what can be considered observation, and only in the final stage of this period of life can we move on to what then leads toward experimentation and testing.

[ 16 ] Yesterday I pointed out how there is a crucial stage in a child’s development between the ages of nine and ten, and how much depends on the teacher or educator discovering the innermost spiritual needs of the individual child at this age and acting accordingly. But this stage in a child’s development must also be closely observed in another sense. For it is actually only at this point that the child truly learns to distinguish itself from its surroundings—through feeling and will, and through judgment. It is only through complete inner independence that the child truly learns to distinguish itself from its surroundings upon reaching sexual maturity.

[ 17 ] But between the ages of nine and ten, a subtle shift begins in the child’s development toward this separation from the environment. And that is precisely why it is so important to keep this stage in mind: because one must still keep the child under one’s guidance until puberty, yet at the same time allow a change—in the sense I described yesterday—to take place in one’s approach. Up to this point, the best way to educate the child is by not expecting the child to be any different from their surroundings. It is always detrimental to try to teach a child anything—say, natural history or something else—before the age of nine or ten that requires the child to focus on objectivity and distinguish themselves from their surroundings. The more one can personify the environment—speak of it in pictorial terms—the more one personifies it, and the more one approaches the child artistically, even when communicating about the environment, the better it is for the child’s development; the more the child’s volitional nature can open up and internalize these concepts.

[ 18 ] This volitional nature of the child can be deepened by everything of a musical nature. From the age of six or seven onward, music provides the child with inner reflection and emotional nuance. The will is strengthened by all other, more creative and artistic activities, provided, of course, that they are appropriate for the child’s age. One must be absolutely clear that when speaking of plants, animals, and even objects of inanimate nature, one should do so in such a way that the child does not yet feel, “I am separate from these things”; for the child, in a sense, feels as if these things were merely an extension of its own being. Personifications of external things and facts are entirely appropriate at this age.

[ 19 ] It is entirely mistaken to speculate, for example, that by personifying nature for a child, one is teaching it something that does not correspond to the truth. That is not at all the point one must make. The point that must be made is this: What do we present to the child so that its life forces may unfold, so that what is within it may emerge from its inner being to the surface of existence? This can be achieved precisely by being as vivid as possible in every description and every narrative about the surroundings, by presenting everything as closely as possible to what springs forth from the human being itself. For everything that is presented to the child at this age must be presented to the whole human being. It must not be presented solely to the mental or nervous systems.

[ 20 ] In this regard, our considerations are still, in many ways, based on a completely false view of humanity, a completely false doctrine of humanity—a false anthropology. In a sense, we attribute far too much to the nervous system; whereas what is of particular importance is that, from the whole human being, through a current flowing from the bottom up, the activity of the limbs—everything that a human being performs in relation to their environment—is first imprinted in the nervous system, specifically in the brain. So we would not regard it as a paradox if anthroposophical understanding of the human being were to assert: Even for later in life, intelligence, the power of discernment, understanding, and reason are developed by allowing the child to perform the correct movements at an early age. When asked: Why does this child, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, lack sound discernment? Why does it make confused judgments?”—one must often reply: “Because in early childhood, the child was not allowed to perform the correct movements with its hands and feet.”

[ 21 ] The fact that this has a certain validity is demonstrated by the use of eurythmy as a required subject in Waldorf school instruction and education. Eurythmy is an art of movement, but it certainly also has a pedagogical and didactic aspect. For eurythmy is, in fact, a true visible language. It is not merely pantomime or some form of dance; rather, it arose—if I may use this expression of Goethe’s—through a sensory -supersensory observation—which movement tendencies exist within the whole human being—I say movement tendencies, not actual movements—which movement tendencies exist within the whole human being when the person expresses themselves through spoken language or song. Actual movements are performed by the larynx and the other speech organs.

[ 22 ] These movements translate into air movements, which in turn convey the sound, the tone, to the ear. But there are inner tendencies toward movement, intentions of movement. One might say that these are already present in their nascent state. This can be studied through sensory-supersensory observation. One can, so to speak, study that which forms within the whole human being but does not become actual movement; rather, it metamorphoses into those movements that are movements of the larynx or other speech organs.

[ 23 ] Then one has the whole person or groups of people perform these movements, and one obtains a visible, organic language in eurythmy that is just as regular as the audible language or singing produced by the human vocal organs. Every single movement—indeed, every single part of a movement—in eurythmy is a law of the human organism, just like speech or singing itself.

[ 24 ] That is why, in the Waldorf school, we see how children who are now of school age find their way into eurythmy so naturally and with inner satisfaction when it is done correctly—just as the younger child naturally finds its way into language and develops through it. Just as the organism simply wants to move through imitation, so the child wants to express itself through language. Its delight, its inner sense of well-being—everything rests on the fact that it can express itself in this way. At a later stage of life, older children develop exactly the same inner feelings toward this visible language of eurythmy, only somewhat transformed. Since this eurythmy is drawn from the full inner laws of the human organism, it in turn has a healthy effect on the organization of the whole human being.

[ 25 ] Let us just consider the human form for a moment—I am referring to the external human form, though this could just as easily apply to the internal organs—but let us take a human hand and arm: Can we truly understand the human hand and arm in their resting state? It would be an illusion to believe that we understand the resting hand or the resting arm. We understand the entire form of the fingers, the palm, and the arm only when we also see the arm in motion. The resting form has meaning only insofar as it is transformed into motion. One could say: The resting form of the hand is the form of the hand’s movement, having just come to rest; and the movements of the hand or the arm must be as they are because the hand, in its state of rest, has its specific, resting form.

[ 26 ] In this way, however, one can draw out of the whole human being precisely those movements that are dictated by the human form itself, by the natural organization itself—just as the vowels and consonants arise from the inner organization. And so eurythmy is derived entirely in accordance with the laws of what is inherent in the human form. But this transformation of the human being at rest into the human being in motion—this meaningful transformation into the visible language of eurythmy—is indeed experienced by the child with deep inner satisfaction; for in this transformation, the child feels the inner life of its entire being.

[ 27 ] This, in turn, has a reciprocal effect, in that the entire organism now naturally develops what constitutes intelligence—something that is not actually meant to be directly cultivated. If one attempts to cultivate intelligence directly, one is in effect introducing into the child’s development something that is, to a greater or lesser extent, stifling and paralyzing. If one draws intelligence out of the whole person, then one is, in essence, having an extraordinarily beneficial effect on the person’s overall development; one gives the child a form of intelligence that simply grows out of the whole person, whereas the one-sided training of the intellect is something like a graft onto the entire organism.

[ 28 ] Thus, from a pedagogical and didactic perspective, eurythmy truly presents itself as a required subject alongside physical education—as a form of spiritual, animated physical education. And I am fully convinced that people will one day think about these matters with greater openness than they do today,

[ 29 ] Actually, something very strange happened to me recently in connection with this matter. I was discussing these matters in relation to eurythmy, and among the listeners was—one might well say—one of the most eminent physiologists in Central Europe. You would be very surprised if I were to tell you his name, for he is world-renowned. - I said—out of a certain modesty, of course, for anthroposophy does not seek to be subversive in any field: One might simply think of gymnastics in this way—that it is derived from human physiology, that is, from the laws governing the physical body, and that it can therefore have a beneficial effect on the healthy development of the human physical form; but one will therefore accept this spiritual, this animated eurythmy alongside gymnastics because it takes the body fully into account, yet in every movement performed, the soul and spirit are alive at the same time, so that the child feels something meaningful in the movement—something meaningful in the soul and spirit—nowhere mere empty physical movement, but everywhere the infusion of the innermost being into the movement. What was remarkable, as I experienced it, was that this physiologist came to me afterward and said: “You also call gymnastics a means of education; I am absolutely opposed to you attributing a physiological justification to gymnastics. From my physiological point of view, gymnastics is barbaric for children.”

[ 30 ] Well, it wouldn’t occur to me to say this on my own, but I do find it interesting to note that one of the most prominent physiologists of our time actually considers physical exercise to be a form of barbarism. As I said, I myself certainly do not wish to go as far as this physiologist; I merely wish to point out that eurythmy has its own valuable pedagogical and didactic significance alongside gymnastics as it is practiced today.

[ 31 ] In particular, during this stage of life—up to the ages of nine or ten—eurythmy becomes an important tool, as it has a reciprocal effect on the child’s spiritual and emotional life; it becomes an important tool for the later years, when the child, between the ages of nine and ten, learns to distinguish itself from its surroundings. But here one must be very careful about how this differentiation takes place.

[ 32 ] First of all, one must bear in mind that the child should not be introduced too early to those areas in which only the mind, the capacity for concepts, and the intellectual can be engaged. One should therefore always let the study of the animal and plant realms precede the study of the mineral, physical, and chemical realms; and one will also see, in relation to the plant and animal realms, that the child learns to distinguish itself from its surroundings in various ways. In the tenth and eleventh years of life, the child feels the animal realm to be much closer to its own nature than the plant realm. The child perceives the plant realm as something that reveals itself from the outside world. The child perceives the animal realm in such a way that one must empathize with it, recognizing that it possesses, in a sense, a nature similar to that of human beings. This must certainly be taken into account in teaching and upbringing. Therefore, whatever is taught to the child at this age about the plant kingdom must be presented in such a way that the plant kingdom is, so to speak, placed in relation to the earth—that one sees in the plant kingdom something that grows out of the earth as if from an organism; the earthly aspect in connection with the plant world, the earthly aspect in its development through the seasons, as revealed in the plant world during the various seasons—these must be addressed in various ways, that is, by adopting, as far as possible, a temporal perspective on the plant world.

[ 33 ] It is very easy to be misled by the pursuit of clarity—which is certainly justified in other fields—when one attempts to apply it to a field such as the one I have just described. People simply pay far too little attention to the fact that the Earth, with its plant life, forms a single entity. It may seem paradoxical to you again, but just as one cannot consider the structure of a single hair on an animal or a human in isolation—but rather can view the structure of a hair only as a part in connection with the entire organism—so, in a sense, one should regard the Earth as an organism, with the plant world belonging to it. If one presents the plant world to the child in this way, then what the child can observe in the plant world will separate itself from the child in the proper manner.

[ 34 ] In contrast, a completely different approach should be taken when considering the animal kingdom. The child has, so to speak, an emotional bridge—a bridge of the soul—to the animals, and this should be taken into account. Today, the views held by earlier natural philosophers in this regard are often met with derision. All of this is certainly also present in Goethe’s approach to observing animals. One turns one’s gaze to a particular animal form; in one animal form—let us say, for example, the lion—one finds the chest region, including the heart, particularly well-developed; in another animal form, the digestive organs are prominent; in yet another, the features related to the teeth are especially well-developed; and in yet another, the horns or similar features are particularly well-developed. The various animal forms have been studied as expressions of the individual organs. One could say: There are head animals, chest animals, and limb animals. And one could further classify the animal forms. Then one has the whole. If one now takes all the individual animal forms together—forming, as it were, a synthesis—so that what stands out particularly in each individual animal form recedes and submits to the whole, then one arrives at the form of the human being. In its outward form, the human being is, in a sense, the synthesis of the entire animal kingdom.

[ 35 ] It is entirely possible to awaken in a child a sense of this synthesis of the entire animal kingdom within the human being. Then something extraordinarily significant has been accomplished; then one has positioned the child, on the one hand, in the right way toward the plant kingdom, and on the other hand, in the right way toward the animal kingdom—toward the animal kingdom in such a way that the child, so to speak, sees a human being spread out across the entire animal kingdom, and sees in the plant kingdom something that belongs organically to the whole Earth. When one brings zoology and botany to life in this way through concrete, individualized instruction, one simultaneously takes into account how the human being, through his or her inner being, is to position himself or herself within the world. Then the human being grows into the world in the right way at the age when he or she is just beginning to learn to distinguish himself or herself from this world by beginning to separate the subject from the object. In this way, one succeeds in properly distinguishing the world from the human being through the observation of the plant world, and in turn, in building a bridge from the human being to the world—that bridge which must exist if a true feeling for the world and love for the world are to develop at all. One achieves this by presenting the animal kingdom to the child as if it were a human being spread out before them. In this way, one can move through the organic, through the living, and thus convey to the child its relationship to the world. And when the twelfth year of life begins in this manner, one truly has the opportunity—without harmfully interfering with the child’s development—to transition to a focus on the purely intellectual, the life of reason. If the educational approach I have spoken of today is followed, we begin with the cultivation of the will; and then, by developing the child’s relationship to the plant and animal kingdoms in this way—by introducing the child to natural history—we move on to the development of feeling and emotion. The child learns everywhere to relate to the plant world and the animal world not merely in a theoretical way; the child does not merely learn to form mental images about them, but establishes a relationship with this environment. Something is brought about within the child that touches the feelings and the soul. And this is of immense importance. Once we have guided the child in this way—through external activity and proper guidance in the cultivation of the will and the soul—until close to the age of twelve, we can then make the transition to the actual cultivation of the intellect, which can now begin to manifest itself as we introduce the child to those subjects and educational materials that also deal with inanimate nature.

[ 36 ] Mineral science, physical and chemical science—all of these subjects should really only be introduced to the child at this age. Of the purely intellectual subjects, only arithmetic is not harmful when taught at an earlier age. It can be practiced earlier because it is connected to inner discipline, and because it is essentially neutral with regard to both the cultivation of the will and the cultivation of the soul; because it depends entirely on our ability to inspire the child from the outside in the right way through geometry and arithmetic during the age when the child is primarily attuned to authority.

[ 37 ] But as far as inanimate nature is concerned—which forms the bridge to the technical realm for human beings—we should not introduce this to the child until around the age of twelve. In this description of a curriculum, full consideration has been given to what can be gleaned from the child’s own development.

[ 38 ] If the external world is introduced to the child in this way, then one can be certain that the child is indeed being guided toward practical living at the right age. And unfortunately, in today’s civilization, we are faced with a world in which people are guided toward practical living only to a very limited extent. People are led into a routine of life; they are led to become “practical” only by mechanically performing individual tasks. A full love of practical work—a full love even for the rough tasks our hands must perform—can be developed only to a very limited extent through today’s school education.

[ 39 ] But it is precisely when we teach and educate in this way—based on a genuine understanding of human nature—that we will find the path leading to the child, once it has reached the age of maturity, having an inner, natural need to become a practical person. Therefore, in the Waldorf school, as we guide the children toward this age of approaching maturity, we strive to incorporate practical elements into every aspect of school life. We seek to introduce handicrafts—which are, at the same time, treated in a certain sense as artistic crafts—into the school.

[ 40 ] We have organized the Waldorf School so that boys and girls are mixed together. So far, this has not resulted in the slightest negative impact on the educational process. On the contrary, it has become apparent that boys take great pleasure in doing “girls’ work”—knitting, crocheting, and the like—and that, particularly with regard to these handicrafts, there is a wonderful spirit of cooperation at the Waldorf School. And perhaps you won’t hold this personal remark against me: Anyone who, as a boy at school, once learned to knit or crochet knows how much has flowed into the mind from learning to knit and crochet; how much has carried over from handling the knitting needles and threading the yarn onto them into the consistent development of logical thinking. That may seem paradoxical, but it is nonetheless one of life’s intimate truths.

[ 41 ] The origin of a fallacy is by no means always to be found in the intellect; rather, what emerges in the intelligence at the height of human life must be sought in the whole person. Above all, however, one must be clear that what finds expression in practical activity is intimately connected—not only in its effect but also in its repercussion—with everything that constitutes human intellectual culture.

[ 42 ] In general, any understanding of human nature based on anthroposophy—if it is to become a form of pedagogy and didactics—must absolutely guide people toward a practical, realistic view of life. After all, anthroposophy does not seek to lead people into a mystical fantasy world where they become estranged from the practical realities of life; rather, anthroposophy seeks to lead them right into the full practice of life, so that they truly come to love practical life.

[ 43 ] I do not believe that anyone can be a true philosopher who, when it comes down to it, cannot at least roughly make a shoe, who cannot engage with the fullness of human life. All specialization in life, however necessary it may be, actually has a beneficial effect only if the person is at the same time fully engaged in life, at least from a certain perspective. Of course, as adults, we cannot do this. But this should nevertheless be fulfilled in a certain way through education and instruction, in the manner I took the liberty of explaining.

[ 44 ] Then, when we guide the child in this way from activity to observation, and finally to experimentation—to practical engagement even in experiments—when we guide the child in this way from the activity of the will to thoughtful observation and to intellectual activity, then we have guided the child through a course of instruction that truly plants a seed of soul and spirit within the child, seeds that can bear fruit throughout their entire life. And it is precisely this entire life that must be taken into account by the teacher and educator.

[ 45 ] Much thought has been given to the true origin of morality in life. Our age is an age of abstraction. People philosophize about how goodness enters into life, and where goodness in human life—whether as an individual or social good—has its origin. Yet people fail to grasp the concrete nature of this origin, because our age is an age of intellectualism, an age of abstraction. But let us take this very seriously: it is natural for a child, from the time of losing baby teeth until sexual maturity, to be able to surrender to the self-evident authority that the world represents for the child. And if we assume that the child absorbs everything it takes into its soul under the influence of this authority, then the approach to education will be such that, in fact, the educator or teacher initially stands before the child as a living moral example. But take my entire description as I have presented it: the teacher, the educator, does not come across as moralizing; he has no need whatsoever to act in a moralizing manner; he is morality incarnate. What he does is regarded by the child, under the sense of authority, as the right thing; what he refrains from doing is regarded as the wrong thing. And so, in the living interaction between child and teacher and educator, a system of sympathy and antipathy toward life develops. And amid these sympathies and antipathies, the proper sense of human dignity develops—along with a fitting sense of belonging in the world. Deep within the child’s innermost being, we see something emerging at this age that occasionally comes to the surface and need only be interpreted correctly.

[ 46 ] We sometimes see a child blush—blush under the influence of certain emotional stirrings. The most significant blushing is that which accompanies a sense of shame. I do not mean the feeling of shame only in the narrow sense, where it refers to sexual matters, but I mean the feeling of shame in the broadest sense—when the child has done something that, according to the system of sympathies and antipathies it has developed, may seem to it to be something for which it should be ashamed, something that requires it, so to speak, to withdraw from the world. Then that which constitutes its very essence, its vital being, surges to the periphery; the true essence of the soul, so to speak, hides behind the blush of shame. The other extreme occurs when the child must stand its ground against a threatening force in its environment. This is when pallor sets in. These two phenomena on the surface of the human being—blushing and turning pale—point to the most essential aspects of human soul life; they point to what the system of sympathies and antipathies in life actually is.

[ 47 ] I would like to say that when one studies the inner psychological process behind blushing and turning pale, one is studying the result of what the teacher—the educator, through his or her natural authority as a pedagogical and didactic artist—cultivates in the child, in the child’s soul and spirit, between the time of losing baby teeth and reaching sexual maturity. At first, morality is not taught; it is lived. What is good passes from the teacher to the child through the child’s sympathies and antipathies, and this manifests itself in the inner blushing and paleness of the soul when the inner sense of life is, in a certain way, threatened, destroyed, or paralyzed by something menacing or by that which one must be ashamed of. And so the corresponding feeling, the corresponding complex of feelings, develops in the child for genuine, true human dignity. It is of great importance that a living morality develop within this delicate balance of the relationship between the child and his or her educator, his or her teacher. For when the child reaches sexual maturity, what I characterized yesterday as the etheric body in time—as a temporal organism—encounters what is now a kind of higher member of the human organization. With sexual maturity comes what anthroposophy calls the astral body, which places the human being into the world in the manner I have described—a body that encompasses the human being far more fully than the etheric body does; this astral body now complements the etheric body, and what is formed in a more artistic way within a system of sympathy and antipathy is transformed into moral attitude, into a state of mind.

[ 48 ] You see, this is the wonderful mystery of human sexual maturity: that what we previously nurtured in the child as a living morality then becomes, with sexual maturity, conscious morality—moral principles. This is the metamorphosis that takes place on a grand scale. What takes place in eroticism is merely a secondary expression of this. Only a materialistic age sees eroticism as the main thing. But the main thing must be seen in that wonderful mystery: that what we initially ground in a more natural way through direct experience then comes to light as conscious morality.

[ 49 ] And everything—everything that is consciously moral in the world, everything that exists as morality in our society and in our entire social life—has its roots, just as a plant has its roots in the soil, in what is cultivated artistically and aesthetically as a system of sympathies and antipathies in children between the time of tooth replacement and sexual maturity, during their school-age years. One should not seek the origin of goodness in philosophical abstractions; one should turn to actual observation, to the real and concrete. One should ask: What is goodness in real life? Goodness in real life is what we are capable of fostering between the authority of the teacher and educator and the child at that specific stage of life.

[ 50 ] This is how life is viewed as a whole. We consider what the child possesses when it is firmly established at school age. At that point, the soul is still intimately connected with the physical organism. It is not until around the thirty-fifth year of life that the soul begins to separate from the body. Then, as human beings, we can take two paths—paths for which, unfortunately, we often no longer have the freedom. One path is this: when the soul-spiritual aspect, so to speak, breaks away at the age of thirty-five, we possess within this soul-spiritual aspect something that is alive—because, in the sense I explained yesterday, living, growing impulses of feeling and will concepts were implanted in childhood—not merely because we recall what we experienced in school, but because we relive it again and again; it is a continuous unfolding of life. One then grows old; one grows old in one’s limbs; one may even become wrinkled and get gray hair, but the head that has turned gray—and perhaps even the body afflicted by gout—will then possess a fresh soul in the highest age; one will become young again without becoming childish.

[ 51 ] What one might experience in one’s fifties as a second childhood is the result of the soul having become strong enough during one’s upbringing and education—not only to function properly when it has physical support, but also when it has broken free.

[ 52 ] The person who stands before the child as a teacher and educator does not merely see the child; that person bears the responsibility on their soul for everything that this human being may become—including happiness in life and inner peace of mind and security of being—well into old age.

[ 53 ] In this way, one can trace what is instilled in the child through education and instruction within the individual. But one can also trace what is instilled into social life. Social morality is a plant that has its roots in the classroom, where children between the ages of seven and fourteen are taught. And just as a gardener looks at the soil of his garden, so should human society look at the soil of the school where children of this age are taught, for there lies the foundation for all morality, for all that is good.

[ 54 ] Anthroposophy aims to be a satisfying form of knowledge of the human being—knowledge of the human being as a unique individual being, and knowledge of the human being as a social being. It aims to enrich the various spheres of life. In this way, it aims to enrich the fields of pedagogy and didactics. Of course, in just two lectures, I can only offer a few guidelines. Anthroposophy will continue its work, for this is, of course, only a modest beginning that could be made by laying a foundation in pedagogy and didactics. At Christmas, in Dornach, I will attempt to further develop anthroposophical pedagogy and didactics in a series of lectures for a broader, international audience. But what I wanted to demonstrate even with these few guidelines is that, in anthroposophy—even in the realm of education—it is not about anything theoretical or the justification of an ideological worldview, but rather about practical living. And this is what people usually fail to recognize about anthroposophy. They regard anthroposophy as something alien to life. That is not what it aims to be. It does not seek to understand the spirit so that people can retreat into a fantasy world with the spirit and become detached from life; rather, it seeks to understand the spirit so that the spirit may also be a creative force within all material existence. And that the spirit is a creative force—this may perhaps already be recognized from the, albeit still modest, successes of the Stuttgart Free Waldorf School.

[ 55 ] The Stuttgart Free Waldorf School does not, of course, limit its activities to simply teaching the children. Many other elements are incorporated into these lessons, and we hold teachers’ conferences—especially whenever I am able to be in Stuttgart myself. In these teachers’ conferences, almost every single child is addressed in terms of their individuality—not in a judgmental way, but with a focus on what we can learn precisely through that child’s unique individuality. The most wonderful things have come of this.

[ 56 ] I have always paid attention to what kind of class emerges depending on whether girls are in the majority—we have such classes—or boys are in the majority—we also have such classes. We also have classes in which there are roughly the same number of girls and boys. One can never deduce from personal interaction alone what characterizes such classes. There are certainly psychological and spiritual factors at play that defy quantification. But a class in which girls are in the majority is quite different—not better or worse, of course, but quite different—from one in which boys are in the majority. And again, a class in which the two genders are present in equal numbers is, in turn, quite different. But what emerges from the fact that a child’s individuality is truly addressed to the degree expressed in the report cards is that, even today at this Waldorf School, one can speak not only—and I mention this in all modesty—of the twenty-five or twenty-eight teachers who are there, but also of the spirit of the Waldorf School.

[ 57 ] This spirit of the Waldorf School extends right into the families. I know how happy the families felt when they received their children’s report cards, and how happy the children were as they carried their report cards home. I really don’t want to offend anyone—please forgive me if I share a purely personal insight—but I have never in my life been able to properly distinguish, when it comes to student performance, how a “4” differs from a “3,” or even how a “3.5” differs from a “4” as a grade, or “almost satisfactory” from “satisfactory”; it has always been impossible for me to distinguish between children’s achievements, given all the imponderables that come into play.

[ 58 ] At Waldorf schools, we don’t issue report cards like that at all; instead, we provide reports in which we simply describe the child, so that each report is a unique creation by the teacher. In addition, we include in the report card a motto for the year—one that is tailored entirely to the child’s individuality—which the child can, in a sense, draw strength from by keeping it in mind again and again throughout the following year, until the next one is issued. In this way, the report card is something thoroughly individual for the child. By proceeding in this way, one can include powerful insights in the report cards. The children fully accept this reflection of themselves, even if it is not entirely laudatory. We have come this far, after all, through the relationship between teachers and students at the Waldorf School. But above all, it is through such things—which I could describe in greater detail—that what might be called the “Waldorf school spirit,” as if it were a living entity, finds its justification. It grows; it is an organic being. I am speaking figuratively, of course, but this figurative language represents a reality. After all, we are often told: Teachers cannot all be perfect. So even if one has the finest educational principles, they fail because of human imperfection.

[ 59 ] Yes, but if one possesses this specific spirit that I am referring to—one that truly springs from an anthroposophical understanding of human nature—and if one can respond to this spirit in the right way, then the human being grows closer to this spirit. And I’m certainly not just spouting school jargon—literally, in this case—when I say that the teachers at the Waldorf School have in fact matured significantly through the spirit of the Waldorf School. They feel this, too. They also feel that this spirit is at work among them, that they themselves are growing under this spirit, and that much of what is to be accomplished for the entire school becomes independent of individual abilities—that there is a unified spirit at work there as well, that this spirit is certainly present in all who teach and educate at the school, the spirit that has the highest interest in sowing seeds in the school in this way—seeds that can apply to life as a whole, as I have described. One can see this in individual instances.

[ 60 ] Of course, we also have children with limited abilities, and it has naturally become necessary to separate these children from the others. Thus, a remedial class for children with limited abilities has been established with a very dedicated teacher. Every time, a struggle must be endured—a painful struggle with the teachers—when they are asked to assign a child to the remedial class, and unless there is the most urgent necessity, no child is sent to the remedial class by the teacher. If we were to proceed schematically, many a child would be shunted off to this remedial class—children whom the teacher, by truly increasing his or her efforts immeasurably, keeps in the regular classroom among the other children.

[ 61 ] These are things I say not to boast, but to illustrate a point. I would not say them if it were not necessary to point out that anthroposophy can provide a pedagogical and didactic foundation that leads to something thoroughly real—to a real spirit that sustains human beings, rather than one that, like the abstract spirit, must merely be sustained by them. And this is what we need in the face of our decaying civilization: for living spirituality to return among us. We should certainly be able to consider every single question of life once again in the context of life as a whole.

[ 62 ] Well, the issue that is often cited today as the most pressing is the social question. The social question is of the broadest interest. This social question, which has brought us not only prosperity but also immense misery—we need only think of Eastern Europe—has many specific aspects. One of the most important is undoubtedly the one related to education and instruction. Indeed, one might even go so far as to say that without addressing the issue of education and instruction as a social task—based on a genuine understanding of human nature—the social question cannot be placed on a sound foundation in the most diverse areas of life. Anthroposophy seeks to take life seriously and honestly in all areas. It therefore seeks, above all, to take education and teaching seriously and honestly.

[ 63 ] It is remarkable that, when it comes to spiritual life, humanity has completely lost sight of a certain concept in this age of abstraction and intellectualism. If we go back to ancient Greece, we still find this concept. It is the concept that simultaneously signifies healing, education, learning, and teaching. In ancient Greece, people were still aware that teaching is a process of restoring human health—that what is imparted to people spiritually, educationally, and through instruction triggers a healing process within them. In the broadest sense, the teacher once saw himself as a healer in the course of human development. Certainly, times change, and with them the character of human development; and these concepts cannot continue to apply in exactly the same way as they once did. We will no longer be able to fall back on the notion that humanity is a sinful one, and that we therefore see in the child a member of sinful humanity whom we must heal—and from this perspective, view pedagogy, so to speak, as merely a branch of higher, spiritual medicine. But we will at least be on the right track if we tell ourselves: Depending on how we influence the child through education and instruction, we bring about in its soul—in later life—what is healthy or unhealthy, spiritually and emotionally healthy or unhealthy, which, however, can also certainly carry over into the physical realm.

[ 64 ] In this sense—that is, so that the human being may develop in a healthy way throughout life in terms of spirit, soul, and body, to the extent possible given his or her innate capacities—anthroposophical pedagogy and didactics, in the true sense of the terms, aim to make their own contribution. In this sense, however, anthroposophy seeks to establish a pedagogy and didactics that are at the same time a healing force for humanity, so that everything we impart to the child—everything we do in the child’s environment—is not, strictly speaking, a medicine, but rather a means by which human life may become wholesome and healthy, both individually and socially.

[ 65 ] Following the first lecture, a clarification is requested regarding the question of immortality between the ages of nine and ten.

[ 66 ] Dr. Steiner: Of course, this is not explicitly a question of immortality. But I would like to say that within the entire complex of life that unfolds here, the question of the immortality of human life is naturally also present. The problem lies precisely in that. I don’t think I expressed myself too vaguely. I said something like this: At this stage of life, the child experiences a new form, a new metamorphosis with regard to the sense of authority it has toward the teacher and educator. Up until now, the child looked up to the teacher and educator. One must not judge this according to some partisan principle, but rather one must judge it from the perspective of the child’s development. For whereas up until this point—from the time of losing their baby teeth onward—the child has essentially been able to feel only this: what the teacher says is what my soul is supposed to believe, what the teacher does is a commandment for me, and so on; whereas the child has truly seen the teacher and the educator as their role model, at this stage of life the child is to become aware that the teacher now also has an authority over them; but that authority no longer operates here in this world; it has been transported into the world of the divine-spiritual. Thus, what lives within the teacher—the educator’s connection to the supersensible—should be emotionally conveyed to the child.

[ 67 ] It is by no means the case that the child actually comes and asks this or that question, expressed in words; but the child shows through its entire behavior that, at this age, it depends on the teacher recognizing that the child wants to be brought into a certain relationship with the supersensible—but through the teacher’s authority. How this is handled in detail depends entirely on the individual case. After all, no two cases are ever quite alike. It sometimes happens that a child—let’s say—comes to school in a bad mood for a few days after having been quite cheerful before. If one has experience in these matters, one knows that this stems precisely from what has been described. And then sometimes it does not require any specifically worded statement from the teacher or one filled with a particular content, but rather simply the way one behaves toward the child—how one speaks to them lovingly during these days, how one otherwise relates to them—that is what enables the child to be guided across a certain chasm. It is not a chasm for the intellect, so to speak, but for the soul’s entire constitution. The question of immortality is already contained within it, not explicitly, but implicitly; it is a question of life as a whole, a question that gradually draws near, so that the child learns to sense in the teacher: He is not merely a human being in terms of his human constitution, but something is revealed in him that he himself experiences as his relationship to the supersensible world. That is, in essence, what I still wanted to say.

[ 68 ] Dr. Steiner: I have also been asked this question in writing, my esteemed audience, and I would like to respond very briefly: “Can the age phases of the sevenfold rhythms be traced throughout one’s entire life, and how do the metamorphoses take place?”

[ 69 ] Well, it is indeed the case that, for the early stages of life—the change of teeth, sexual maturity, and even the early twenties—for those who are truly able to observe this life intimately, these phases contrast very sharply with one another. One can also easily see how, during this period, human beings exhibit a strong parallelism between their physical development and their mental and emotional development. Of course, such phases also exist later in life. However, they unfold in a much more intimate way, and the peculiar thing is that they become increasingly blurred the more humanity progresses. I could also say that they become internalized. And in contrast to our present-day, more external view of history, it is perhaps not useless to point out that in earlier periods of human development, such phases of life were clearly visible well into later adulthood. This explains why, in times to which anthroposophy can indeed look back, history was not merely a record of documents; people were in a different state of mind than they are today, in an age dominated by intellectualism. I am not criticizing this; I am merely describing it. We notice, for example, when we look back to earlier times, how human beings, simply through what they observe in their elders, approach old age with a certain sense of anticipation. This is a feeling that can be discerned simply by looking back impartially at the development of humanity. People today do not look forward to old age in the same way—wondering what old age might reveal to them, things one must grow old to experience—as was the case in earlier times, because these periods of life, where life stands in sharp contrast to previous stages, are gradually becoming blurred. If we adopt an unbiased perspective, we can today barely trace this development in most people—perhaps only up to the age of twenty-eight or thirty; after that, the picture becomes very unclear for people today. In the age known as the age of the patriarchs, when people looked up to old age, they knew that even the descending current of life—that current in which the soul, so to speak, emancipates itself from the body—could offer a person something quite special. It can offer them that which represents the soul’s and the spirit’s share in the body, which is gradually dying off, becoming sclerotic internally, and so on. And the soul’s most intimate experiences are different when the soul is in a body that is moving toward life, experiencing upward growth; then one perceives and experiences things differently than in the case of a descending—I would say, hardening—life.

[ 70 ] But this—which I also mentioned in my lecture—this rejuvenation amidst a physical life that is becoming more rigid, also gives a certain strength to old age. And we find this strength when we look back to earlier times. I believe it is no coincidence that the Greeks—above all in Homer, but also in other poets—[I do not wish to discuss here whether Homer existed as a distinct individual or not]—saw in him one who created only in old age from a soul that had been set free, yet who witnessed the decay of his physical body. And much of what we find in Eastern wisdom—in the Vedas and, above all, in Vedanta philosophy—has sprung forth from the soul that rejuvenates itself in old age.

[ 71 ] Of course, humanity’s progress in experiencing freedom could not take place if these things did not become blurred. But in a certain intimate way, they are still very much present today. And anyone who, as a human being, attains a certain degree of self-knowledge already knows how strangely what they experienced inwardly—let’s say—in the 1930s is transformed in the 1950s. Essentially, even though the life of the soul remains the same, everything appears in a different nuance. Even if these nuances do not resonate deeply with people today—because we have become so abstract and no longer engage with what is truly concrete—it is nevertheless true that these successive metamorphoses exist for a more subtle, intimate observation of life. And even if the present age, with its turbulent social life, has no time for these intimacies, a time will come again—for otherwise humanity would be heading toward decline—when it will be possible to truly observe human beings.

[ 72 ] Why shouldn’t one want to advance to the observation of human beings themselves? After all, we have come a very long way in the observation of the external natural world, and anyone familiar with all the treatises on the details of plant and animal specimens and species and so on—anyone who recognizes the full range of external facts that have been observed—will not consider it impossible that this immense diligence, this vast, intimate observation and perspective that we have developed for the external natural world, might one day also be developed for the inner nature of human beings. Whenever that may happen, however one may make progress in this observation—let that remain undecided here—it is certainly true, in any case, that the art of education, the art of teaching, will advance to the same extent that one engages in such observation of human beings and traces their metamorphosis into later life.

[ 73 ] I would like to point out, however, that I meant more than just a metaphor when I said yesterday: “Whoever did not learn to pray in childhood cannot bless in old age.” What a child acquires as reverence and devotion is later—at a much later stage of life—transformed into a power that has a healing effect on one’s surroundings, particularly on children’s environments, and which can thus, in a certain sense, be described as a blessing. Such an image—that hands clasped in prayer at the age of nine or ten become blessing hands at the age of fifty or fifty-five—such truths are more than mere images. They reveal, however, the inner, organic connection of the whole of human life. And this unfolds through such metamorphoses.

[ 74 ] As mentioned, they become somewhat more blurred and less clearly perceptible as one gets older, but they are still present and must be studied, particularly for the sake of the art of education and teaching.