The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. A Lecture on Pedagogy During the “French Course” at the Goetheanum

[ 1 ] The present is the age of intellectualism. The intellect is the power of the soul in whose exercise the human being is least involved with the innermost core of his being. It is not without reason that people speak of the cold, intellectual nature. One need only consider how the intellect affects artistic perception and activity. It drives it away or impairs it. Artists also fear that their creations will be explained conceptually or symbolically by the intellect. In such clarity, the warmth of the soul—which breathed life into the works during their creation—disappears. The artist wants his work to be grasped by emotion, not by reason. For then the warmth with which he experienced it is transmitted to the viewer. But this warmth is repelled by intellectual explanation.

[ 2 ] In social life, intellectualism tends to isolate people from one another. They can only function properly within a community if they can infuse their actions—which always affect the well-being or suffering of their fellow human beings—with a part of their soul. A person must experience in another not only that person’s actions, but also something of that person’s soul. In an action that springs from intellectualism, however, a person withholds their soul. They do not allow it to flow over into the other person.

[ 3 ] It has long been said that intellectualism has a paralyzing effect on teaching and education. At first, people think only of the child’s intelligence, not that of the educator. The goal is to design educational and teaching methods in such a way that not only the child’s cold intellect is activated and developed, but also the warmth of the heart is nurtured within the child.

[ 4 ] The anthroposophical worldview is in complete agreement with this. It fully recognizes the excellent educational principles that have come to life through this call. But it is clear that the soul can only be filled with warmth by another soul. Therefore, it believes that, above all, pedagogy itself—and thereby the entire educational activity of educators—must be imbued with spirit.

[ 5 ] In recent times, intellectualism has made significant inroads into teaching and educational methods. It has achieved this indirectly through modern scientific life. Parents allow science to tell them what is good for the child’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Teachers, in their own training, receive from science the spirit that guides their educational methods.

[ 6 ] But this science has achieved its triumphs precisely through intellectualism. It does not want to imbue its ideas with anything from the inner life of the human soul. It wants to derive everything from sensory observation and experimentation.

[ 7 ] Such a science can develop the excellent understanding of nature that has emerged in modern times. However, it cannot establish a true pedagogy.

[ 8 ] Such a view, however, must be based on a knowledge that encompasses human beings in body, soul, and spirit. Intellectualism considers human beings only in terms of the body. For only the physical is revealed to observation and experiment.

[ 9 ] A true understanding of human nature is necessary before a true pedagogy can be established. And anthroposophy seeks to attain this true understanding of human nature.

[ 10 ] One cannot understand human beings by first constructing a mental image of their physical nature through a science based solely on what is perceptible to the senses, and then asking whether this nature is also animated and whether a spiritual element is at work within it.

[ 11 ] Such an approach to understanding human nature is detrimental to the care of the child. For in a child, far more so than in an adult, body, soul, and spirit form a unified whole. One cannot first care for a child’s health based solely on the principles of the sensory sciences and then attempt to teach the healthy organism what one considers appropriate for it in terms of soul and spirit. Everything one accomplishes in the soul and spirit—both within the child and together with the child—has a healing or harmful effect on the child’s physical life. The soul and spirit have a physical impact on human existence on earth. Physical processes are a manifestation of the soul and spirit.

[ 12 ] The science of the senses can only focus on the body as a being with physical processes; it does not grasp the whole human being.

[ 13 ] One senses this by looking at the field of education. But in doing so, one fails to recognize what is needed in this regard today. It is not stated explicitly, but it is understood on a subconscious level: Pedagogy cannot flourish through the sensory sciences; therefore, pedagogical methods should be based not on these sciences, but on educational instincts.

[ 14 ] In theory, this should be acknowledged. But in practice, it leads nowhere. For modern humanity has lost the primal nature of instinctual life. It is like groping in the dark to try to build an instinctive pedagogy based on instincts that are no longer fundamentally present in human beings today.

[ 15 ] This is understood through anthroposophical insight. Through it, one can know that the intellectualist orientation in science owes its existence to a necessary phase in the development of humanity. Humanity in modern times has emerged from the period of instinctual life. The intellect has assumed its preeminent significance. Humanity needed it in order to progress in the right way along its path of development. It leads humanity to the degree of consciousness that it must attain in a given age, just as the individual human being must acquire certain abilities at a certain stage of life. But under the influence of the intellect, the instincts are dulled. One cannot seek to return to a life governed by instinct without working against the development of humanity. One must recognize the significance of full consciousness, which has been achieved through intellectualism. And one must, within this full consciousness, fully and consciously restore to human beings what a life governed by instinct can no longer provide them today.

[ 16 ] This requires an understanding of the spiritual and the soul that is grounded in reality just as much as the sensory science grounded in intellectualism. Anthroposophy strives for this. Many people today still shy away from acknowledging this. They become familiar with the way modern science seeks to understand human beings. They feel that this is not the way to truly know a person. Yet they refuse to acknowledge that a new approach could be developed to penetrate the soul and spirit with the same level of awareness as that applied to the physical body. For this reason, they wish to return to instincts as the basis for understanding and educating human beings.

[ 17 ] But we must move forward; and the only way to do so is to supplement anthropology with anthroposophy, and sensory knowledge of the human being with spiritual knowledge. The complete re-learning and rethinking required for this frightens people. And out of an unconscious fear, they accuse anthroposophy of being fanciful, even though it merely seeks to proceed in the spiritual realm as judiciously as the sensory sciences do in the physical realm.

[ 18 ] Consider the child. Around the age of seven, the child develops its second set of teeth. This development is not merely the result of the period around the age of seven. It is a process that begins with embryonic development and finds its conclusion only in the eruption of the second set of teeth. Forces have always been at work within the child’s organism that, at a certain stage of development, bring about the development of the permanent teeth. These forces no longer manifest themselves in this way in the subsequent stages of life. No further tooth formation takes place. But the corresponding forces have not been lost; they continue to act; they have merely been transformed. They have undergone a metamorphosis. There are other forces in the child’s organism that undergo a similar metamorphosis.

[ 19 ] If we observe the child’s organism as it develops in this way, we come to the conclusion that the forces in question are active within the physical organism before the teeth begin to fall out. They are embedded in the processes of nutrition and growth. They exist in inseparable unity with the physical body. Around the age of seven, they become independent of the body. They continue to exist as soul forces. We find them at work in the older child’s feelings and thoughts.

[ 20 ] Anthroposophy shows how an etheric organism is integrated into the human physical organism. Until the age of seven, this etheric organism is active in its entirety within the physical organism. During this stage of life, part of the etheric organism becomes free from its direct activity within the physical organism. It acquires a certain degree of independence. With this independence, it also becomes an autonomous bearer of the soul life, relatively independent of the physical organism.

[ 21 ] However, since spiritual experience can unfold in earthly life only with the help of this etheric organism, the spiritual aspect is entirely embedded within the physical body before the age of seven. If the spiritual is to become active at this age, its activity must manifest physically. The child can only enter into a relationship with the outside world if this relationship presents a stimulus that can be expressed physically. This is only the case when the child imitates. Before the child’s teeth begin to fall out, the child is a purely imitative being in the broadest sense. The child’s education can consist only of the people around him demonstrating what he is to imitate.

[ 22 ] The educator should experience within themselves what the human physical organism is like when it still contains its entire etheric organism. This provides insight into the child’s nature. The abstract principle alone is of no use. For educational practice, it is necessary that an anthroposophical art of education be developed in detail to reveal how the human being manifests itself as a child.

[ 23 ] Between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, there is now a soul organism within the physical and etheric organisms—which anthroposophy refers to as the astral organism—just as, up until the change of teeth, the etheric organism is within the physical one.

[ 24 ] This means that, at this stage of life, the child develops a way of living that is no longer limited to imitation. However, the child is also not yet able to determine its relationships with other people based on fully conscious thoughts guided by intellectual judgment. This becomes possible only when, with sexual maturity, a part of the soul organism detaches itself from the corresponding part of the etheric organism and becomes independent. From the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year of life, what determines the child’s behavior is not the orientation toward the people in their environment that arises from the power of judgment, but rather that which is brought about by authority.

[ 25 ] This, however, means that education during these years of life must be structured entirely with a view to developing a natural authority. One cannot rely on the child’s intellectual judgment, but must understand how the child is willing to accept what presents itself as true, good, and beautiful because the child sees that his exemplary educator considers it to be true, good, and beautiful.

[ 26 ] To this end, the educator must act in such a way that, so to speak, he not only presents the true, the good, and the beautiful to the child, but embodies them. It is who he is that is passed on to the child, not what he teaches him. All teaching must be presented to the child in an essential way through the educator’s example. Teaching itself must be a work of art, not merely theoretical content.