The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Waldorf Education

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, please accept my apologies for not being able to address you in the local language. But since that is not possible, I must speak in my own language, and my remarks will have to be translated afterward.

[ 2 ] The Waldorf school method—about which I have been asked to share some fundamental principles here—owes its origins to the convergence of two spiritual elements. The Waldorf School in Stuttgart was first founded during the turbulent postwar period in Germany, when there were plans to establish various social institutions. The industrialist Emil Molt initially conceived of establishing a school for the children of his industrial enterprise—a school whose educational approach would enable the educated individual to gradually engage in social life in a reasonable, purely human way, and ensure that social movements would not be purely dependent on political agitation. That was the first element. The second came later.

[ 3 ] Emil Molt was a long-time member of the anthroposophical movement—that anthroposophical movement which seeks to reintroduce spiritual insights and a reality of spiritual life into contemporary social life, a reality grounded just as firmly in the principles of human truth as is the case with the natural sciences, which have grown to such prominence over the centuries. And so Emil Molt called upon me, as the representative of this anthroposophical movement, to bring the pedagogical and didactic aspects into this Waldorf school.

[ 4 ] As a result, this school has not become the kind that might be desired based on the wide variety of contemporary educational reform efforts, but rather it has become a school founded entirely on pedagogy and didactics—on the kind of pedagogy and didactics that can emerge from a genuine, deeply penetrating understanding of human nature.

[ 5 ] Over the course of our civilization, we have gradually lost a true understanding of human nature. We focus more on the external natural world and see in human beings only their physical and natural foundation. Of course, the physical and natural foundation must not be disregarded in education; yet human beings are beings composed of body, soul, and spirit, and a true understanding of humanity can only come about when spirit, soul, and body are truly understood in equal measure.

[ 6 ] Because the Waldorf School’s educational approach—which is based on an understanding of human nature and thus also on an understanding of the developing human being, the child—underlies the school and its principles, these principles are not dependent on being implemented in any particular school, regardless of its location. It is not a matter of distinguishing between rural and urban schools; nor is it a matter of distinguishing between boarding and day schools; rather, the Waldorf school has become a school that is strictly structured on a pedagogical and didactic principle capable of adapting to all possible external circumstances dictated by social life.

[ 7 ] This also serves to highlight that, although this Waldorf school was initially associated with the children of Emil Molt’s industrial enterprise, it now welcomes children from all social classes and backgrounds, making it a truly inclusive school. For what is derived from a genuine understanding of human nature in terms of pedagogical and didactic impulses is universal, international, and applicable to all classes and all strata of humanity.

[ 8 ] I do not wish to discuss the principles of the Waldorf school in general terms here; I have too little time for that, and since the Waldorf school is not essentially based on a program but on direct, daily practice—on direct interaction with the child and his or her nature—it is really only possible to hint at what the

[ 9 ] The principles of the Waldorf school remain in place. And I ask you to bear in mind that I can therefore offer only very brief hints as to what this is all about.

[ 10 ] Understanding human nature means, above all, recognizing that the developing human being is subject to stages of development to a much greater extent than is generally assumed. Although these developmental stages have been taken into account to a greater or lesser extent by educational principles throughout history, Waldorf education seeks to give them particular emphasis in a very profound and intensive way.

[ 11 ] It should be emphatically pointed out that around the age of seven—approximately, of course—when a child begins to lose its baby teeth, a complete transformation, a complete metamorphosis, takes place in the child’s life. In a certain sense, the child becomes a different being as a result of getting their second set of teeth. And what is the basis for this transformation in the child’s being? It is based on the fact that by the age of seven, those forces that were previously forces of organic development—which had been at work as driving forces in the breath, the blood circulation, the entire structure of the organism, growth, and nutrition—now leave only a remnant for organic activity and undergo a metamorphosis, transforming into, if I may say so, a metamorphosed soul life of the child.

[ 12 ] In recent times, psychological studies have frequently explored how the soul influences the body, the child’s organism. A true Spiritual Science is not something that hovers in mystical realms of fog, but rather something that looks at life and the world in a practical way, based on direct experience. Therefore, this Spiritual Science does not inquire abstractly into the relationship between soul and body, but rather, based on experience—one might say, through the “experiment of life”—it inquires into the relationship between soul and body.

[ 13 ] There we find that the spiritual forces manifest their own activity as organic forces between the child's birth and the change of teeth. What happens in the body during this period is the same as what later occurs during

[ 14 ] Children through thinking and memory, which are then handled in a more emancipated, purely spiritual way—a process that takes place within the child’s soul during the later years of life, between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity.

[ 15 ] To sharpen one’s awareness of this metamorphosis in human life around the age of seven, and to further sharpen one’s awareness of that immense metamorphosis that then takes place at the ages of fourteen and fifteen with the onset of puberty—this is the first thing that must become a mindset, must become a character trait, above all in the teacher.

[ 16 ] And anyone who approaches the developing human being—the child—with such an attitude knows, above all else, that up to the age of seven, the child is a kind of universal sensory organ; that as a whole organism—approximately—it relates to its surroundings in much the same way that the eye or the ear—that is, a sensory organ—relates to the surroundings. This sensory organ is capable of absorbing the corresponding impressions from the environment and imitating them in image form. Until the age of seven, a human being is internally permeated by intense elements. He absorbs what is in his environment like a total sensory organ. He is a being entirely devoted to imitation. It is remarkable that, when one studies the child, one finds that—up to the age of seven—its physical constitution places it in a relationship with its entire environment, with the entire world, in a physically expressed relationship that later becomes spiritualized and transforms into a religious relationship. And we can only understand the child up to the time of tooth replacement if we perceive within it those forces, those impulses, which, arising from its physical-psychic constitution, make the child a Homo religiosus through and through. The entire environment must behave accordingly. We must carry out toward the child what the child is permitted to imitate through its immediate senses.

[ 17 ] If a child, let’s say, steals—I’d like to illustrate this with an example—the following situation may arise: A couple came to me once, very upset, and said, “Our boy is stealing!” I replied immediately, “We must first investigate whether this is actually stealing.” What had the boy done? The boy was handing out coins he had taken from his mother’s cabinet; he was giving them to other children. He was even performing a charitable act in the process! Every day, he had observed the place where his mother took money from. He regarded his mother’s action as legitimate. He imitated her. It was an imitation of his mother’s action, not theft.

[ 18 ] The point is always that we must be keenly attentive to ensuring that the child is able to imitate—and is also allowed to imitate—everything that happens in its surroundings. But this extends—and this is the important point—all the way into feelings and thoughts. The best educator for a child up to the age of seven is the one who not only acts in ways that the child is allowed to imitate, but who also allows himself no other feelings and no other thoughts than those the child is allowed to experience within himself.

[ 19 ] Then one must be able to observe in the right way how this entire approach to education translates into a spiritual influence on the child. During the first seven years of life, everything is organic for the child. The way someone in the child’s environment behaves—if, for example, they are a quick-tempered person—affects the child. The child is constantly exposed to these outbursts of anger; the child experiences within itself the shock of actions arising from that anger. This does not merely affect the child’s soul; it affects the child’s breathing, blood circulation, and vascular structure. And anyone who is a true connoisseur of human nature—who can observe human life not merely in terms of a single stage of life, but across the entire earthly existence from birth to death—knows that what is brought about in the first seven years of life through psychological and spiritual influences, and by impressions from the outside world—affects the blood vessels, blood circulation, and the innermost respiratory processes—manifests itself in the body’s constitution in later years, up to the age of forty or fifty. A child who is tossed back and forth between confusing impressions develops an unstable interaction between breathing and blood circulation.

[ 20 ] These are not matters for general medicine; they are subtle aspects of the human circulatory system that anyone who wishes to raise a child must understand.

[ 21 ] In the seventh year of life, with the change of teeth—the change of teeth is, in a sense, a turning point; we only change our teeth once—the forces that bring about the change of teeth are then set free for later life; they transition into the psychological and spiritual realms. And then, at the elementary school age—the age at which we are to educate the child in the elementary school system—we have before us those forces that have worked plastically in the organism up to the age of seven, so that they continue to work, one might say, musically within the organism until sexual maturity. Up to the age of seven, the organization of the head influences the entire human organism. The human head is the great sculptor that shapes the blood vessels, regulates blood circulation, and so on. From the age of seven to fifteen, the rhythmic system—in the broadest sense—becomes the guiding force in the human organism. And if we are able to imbue the rhythmic system in our teaching and in our education itself with rhythm, tempo, and indeed a general musical quality—through our entire approach to schooling, through our entire educational practice, and through all our instruction—then we will be meeting the demands of human nature.

[ 22 ] This education, from the time of tooth replacement through puberty, must be structured in such a way that it essentially appeals to the artistic element.

[ 23 ] And it is an artistic element that permeates Waldorf school instruction from the seventh to the fourteenth year. The child should be guided toward everything through imagery. We do not teach the child abstract letters from the outset. This does not foster a human relationship with the abstract symbols that letters represent in a civilized culture. Written characters are abstract. In the Waldorf school, we develop them from images. We first let the child paint and draw, and then gradually introduce the letter forms by drawing on what flows from human nature in painting and drawing. And only then—when the entire organism, body, soul, and spirit, has been engaged through the process of learning to write, which is derived from art—do we move on to reading, which engages only a part of the human being. For reading does not concern the whole of human existence, but only a part of it; whereas writing is drawn from the whole of human existence. If one proceeds in this way, one has truly considered the human being in terms of body, soul, and spirit.

[ 24 ] When all instruction is structured in such a way that the artistic is brought to the child, and the teacher, in every aspect of his or her demeanor, is an artist in educating and teaching, something remarkable occurs. You see, today there is much thought given to how to tire the child as little as possible. Fatigue curves are used to determine which subjects and which physical or mental activities tire the child the most. In the Waldorf school, teaching and education appeal to that aspect of the human system that does not tire at all. A person tires through their mind, through thinking; a person tires through movement, through the activities of their will in connection with their motor life. The rhythmic system—the respiratory-cardiac system, which underlies what is truly artistic—continues to function regardless of whether you are awake, asleep, tired, or not tired; it functions in the same way from birth to death. The healthiest educational system consists of appealing to the human being’s never-fatiguing rhythmic system.

[ 25 ] Based on a thorough understanding of human nature, we see that all teaching and education are founded on the rhythmic system and appeal to the human rhythmic system.

[ 26 ] When one incorporates all of this into sculpture and music, when one proceeds everywhere from the visual, the rhythmic, the metrical, and the melodious, then one notices something very peculiar. Then one realizes that, as the child progresses beyond artistic activity, a demand arises that goes beyond what has been developed in images and what has been developed through the musical apprehension of the world; this reveals that it is too rich to be continually enjoyed by human beings. The child shows very early on, around the ages of ten or eleventh, that the artistic realm is too rich for human beings to always be able to devote themselves to it, and a desire for simplification arises within them. And this is then a natural, elemental desire that springs from the child—the desire for simplification.

[ 27 ] And it is only when the desire for simplification arises from the artistic realm that one can transfer the artistic to the intellectual. For once the richness of the artistic has been given to the child, one may then teach it the poverty of the intellectual without disrupting its physical and emotional development. We therefore draw everything intellectual from the artistic.

[ 28 ] And on the other hand, if one allows the child to move its body in an artistic sense, if one allows the limbs themselves to move in a musical sense, as happens in eurythmy —which is now also being presented over in Ilkley—if one introduces the child to sculptural activity, to musical activity that engages the whole body, then a remarkable hunger arises in the child—a spiritual, emotional, and physical hunger. The child’s constitution then requires very specific physical exercises and a very specific regimen of physical care; for physical care is only healthy for the development of the human organism if there is a mysterious hunger within the human organism for the kinds of movements found in gymnastic exercises, so that the intellectual and volitional needs arise from the artistic need.

[ 29 ] This, however, provides us with an education, a system of instruction, that is directed not toward any single aspect of human nature, but toward the whole human being. This gives us the opportunity, for example, to develop memory in such a way that it has a beneficial effect on the physical constitution. I would now like to share with you something that still sounds paradoxical today, but which will in the future be a fundamental tenet of physiology: In children, everything that has a mental effect also has a physical effect, penetrating deep into the organism. And it remains there. Today we observe people who, around the age of fifty, develop all sorts of metabolic diseases, rheumatism, and the like. Anyone who, in the field of education, does not merely observe the child during childhood, but who understands that childhood is the seed for the whole of life—just as the plant seed is for the whole plant—knows that if one demands too much of the child in terms of material to be memorized, this is forced into their organism in such a way that, by the time they reach their forties or fifties, metabolic disorders arise to such an extent that the organism can no longer control them.

[ 30 ] By pointing this out to you, you will be able to believe me when I say that here at the Waldorf School, everything is geared toward fostering the spiritual and emotional aspects in such a way that they simultaneously have the corresponding physical effect on the human being. Every lesson is structured with hygiene in mind, precisely because we recognize how the spirit continues to exert its effects within the human organism.

[ 31 ] By basing pedagogy and didactics on an understanding of human nature in this way, we are actually able to derive the curriculum and learning objectives for each school year directly from the child itself. We follow solely what the child provides us. Our pedagogy is, through and through, an understanding of human nature.

[ 32 ] As a result, we believe we are educating not only from the child’s perspective, but from the perspective of life on Earth as a whole. For the fact is that, for example, anyone who believes—and these are views and methods that are certainly justified from other perspectives; they must not be taken to extremes—that one should teach a child only what it already understands through its own perception is very much mistaken. Anyone who says this does not realize the value, for example, of the following: Between the age of seven and puberty, it is the greatest benefit for a child to have an educator and teacher who is a natural authority figure. Just as the principle of imitation must prevail up to the age of seven, so must the principle of authority prevail between the ages of seven and fourteen. And there, many things that the child cannot yet fully comprehend are absorbed into the soul purely on the authority of the beloved teacher, the beloved educator—through love, that love which is the most important principle of education. And then one need only consider how many people, in their thirties or forties, can reflect on something they absorbed on the authority of their beloved educator when they were eight or nine years old. Now it rises up again from the soul, penetrating consciousness, after one has matured. One begins to understand, through one’s own human faculties, what one had absorbed at the age of eight or nine under the beloved authority of the teacher.

[ 33 ] And when something like this happens—it is a source of human vitality; it truly revitalizes the whole person later in life—to understand, only after decades, what one had previously absorbed through a love of authority. This is how one views the whole of human life, not merely that which one-sidedly reveals a single aspect of this human life in the natural realm.

[ 34 ] I would like to apply this principle to the moral realm as well. A child’s religious upbringing is fostered by following the innate religious impulse that lives within the child, almost as if by instinct. But then one will be able to observe the following: Are there not people who, once they have reached a certain age, seem to bestow a blessing upon those around them simply by their presence? We know, of course, that it can be any group of people gathered together—such a person enters, and it is not so much what they say, but solely the fact that they are there, the way they speak, the tone of their voice, and their manner—that has the effect of pouring out grace upon those around them. Such people can teach us, when we look back on their early childhood, how they came to be like this—bestowing grace, bestowing blessings: they became this way because, as children, they had the opportunity, through an almost religious relationship with a beloved authority figure, to revere that person and look up to them with awe. No one can bestow blessings in old age who did not, in childhood, look up with reverence and high esteem to a beloved authority figure. I would like to express this symbolically as follows: Anyone who wishes to extend their hand to grant grace or to bless in later life must have truly folded their hands inward in prayer during childhood. Thus, symbolically speaking, the folding of the hands in childhood leads to the blessing of the hands from childhood into the very latest stages of life.

[ 35 ] Thus, we must look at the whole person in every respect and, during childhood, lay the foundation for a moral character rooted in inner religious understanding and for a person who is fully equipped to face life.

[ 36 ] This is possible when one attempts to derive pedagogy truly from a deep understanding of human nature—that understanding which arises from observing human beings from birth to the grave. If efforts at educational reform are so intense in our time, it is because the question of education is also the greatest social issue of our time.

[ 37 ] But this is what permeates Waldorf education—which I have sought to describe here very briefly—as a mindset, as a universal love of humanity. And so, however weak and imperfect this attempt may still be, we nevertheless hold fast to the hope that a pedagogy built precisely on an understanding of human nature can also, in the best sense, be a pedagogy that shapes the human being—that by acting in school based on the observation of human life, one can best influence life through the school as well. And this is likely to be the fundamental question underlying most of today’s educational reform efforts.