The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Spiritual Foundation of Education I

[ 1 ] I would like to begin by apologizing for the fact that I will not be able to deliver these lectures in the language of this country. However, since I lack practice, I must simply express these ideas in the language in which I am able to do so. Hopefully, the following translation will make up for any shortcomings in this regard.

[ 2 ] Secondly, allow me to say that I am deeply grateful to the esteemed committee for permitting me to deliver these lectures at this gathering in Oxford. I consider it a very special honor to be able to deliver these lectures here in this venerable city. It is, after all, the city where I myself, when I had the privilege of visiting it 20 years ago, felt the powers of venerable tradition radiating from everything one can perceive here.

[ 3 ] And now, if I may take the liberty of speaking about a method of education that, in a certain sense, may be called new, I would also like to point out that, in our time, so many people simply pursue the new for the sake of being new. However, anyone who wishes to pursue something new in any field of human civilization must first earn the right and justification to do so by knowing how to appreciate and honor the old in an appropriate manner.

[ 4 ] Here in Oxford, I find everything inspiring because of the Powers that still live on today from these ancient traditions. And perhaps only those who can feel this have the right to speak of the new. For only that which is new and has its roots in the time-honored can endure in the world. Perhaps the very tragedy and deep misery of our time lie in the fact that people constantly talk about wanting this or that new thing, yet so few are inclined to shape this newness out of the old in a worthy manner.

[ 5 ] That is why I feel such heartfelt gratitude, above all, toward Mrs. Mackenzie, the principal organizer of this gathering, and toward the entire committee, who have devoted themselves to the task of arranging the lectures here; I feel such deep gratitude because it is precisely this that makes it possible to articulate something that is, in a certain sense, intended to be new, within the milieu of the venerable, through which it can first be validated.

[ 6 ] I am equally grateful for the very kind introductory remarks that Principal Jacks made here yesterday.

[ 7 ] With this, I may have hinted at the spirit in which these lectures are to be given: What I am about to say here regarding education and teaching is based on the spiritual-scientific knowledge that I have made it my life’s work to develop.

[ 8 ] This spiritual insight was initially cultivated for its own sake, and in recent years, followers of this worldview have come together to apply it to the various areas of practical life. And so it was Emil Molt in Stuttgart who, drawing on the vision of what the Goetheanum—the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, Switzerland—seeks to achieve, wanted to see this applied to an educational institution for children of compulsory school age. And this led to the establishment of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.

[ 9 ] The pedagogy and didactics of this Waldorf school in Stuttgart are now grounded in that spiritual life which I believe, in keeping with the spirit of our time, must lead to a continuation of the educational system—precisely as the spirit of our time, the tasks at hand, and the stage of human development within our epoch demand.

[ 10 ] The system of education and instruction referred to here is entirely based on an understanding of the human being—an understanding that encompasses the whole person from birth to death, but which also seeks to grasp all that is of a supersensible nature within this life between birth and death, as a testimony to the fact that the human being belongs to a supersensible world.

[ 11 ] We do, however, have a spiritual life in our own time; but above all, a spiritual life as it has been handed down to us from ancient times—a spiritual life that we carry on in the traditional way. Alongside this spiritual life, and with an ever-diminishing organic connection to it, we have that life which springs from the magnificent scientific insights of our modern age. In this age—in which the great natural scientists of our time, the leading minds in the understanding of nature, have lived—we must not, even today, when speaking of spiritual life, overlook what natural science itself so powerfully reveals to human understanding.

[ 12 ] This natural science can provide us with insight into the physical nature of human beings; it can provide us with insight into the course of physical and physiological functions during a person’s physical life. But this scientific knowledge—as we pursue it by experimenting with external instruments and observing with our external senses—has, precisely at a time when it has become so extensive, failed to penetrate more deeply into the actual spiritual life of human beings. I do not mean this as a criticism; that was the great task of natural science, as we find it, for example—I would say—systematically compiled by a figure such as Huxley. That is its great achievement: that it once looked at nature, completely unconcerned with everything spiritual that exists in the world.

[ 13 ] Yet we also possess an understanding of humanity that cannot be translated into the immediate practical application of the spiritual. We have a spiritual life in our present civilization, and the various religious denominations perpetuate this spiritual life. However, we do not have a spiritual life that can speak to a person when he asks the anxious question about the eternal, the imperishable, and the supernatural to which he belongs; we have no spiritual life that, in other words, can give us convictions—convictions when we stand alone in the world with our physical life, with our physical view of life, and now ask: What is the eternal, the supernatural foundation underlying this entire sensory world?

[ 14 ] We can then form convictions about what we were before birth in the bosom of the divine, supersensible world. We can form convictions about what our soul will have to go through once it has passed through the gate of death. We can express what we grasp as convictions in the form of statements. It can, I would say, flow warmly into our hearts, into our souls. We can say: A human being is more in the entire universe than he is in this physical life between birth and death.

[ 15 ] The very thing we gain in this way remains a conviction; it remains something we can think and feel. It is becoming increasingly difficult to incorporate the magnificent convictions that natural science provides us—in addition to this spiritual dimension—into our daily lives and practical actions. We know about the spirit; we no longer know how to deal with the spirit, how to act in accordance with the spirit, or how to infuse our daily lives with the spirit.

[ 16 ] Which area of life most calls on us to engage with the spirit? It is education; it is the field of teaching. In education, we must address the whole person, and the whole person consists of body, soul, and spirit. We must be able to engage with the spirit when we educate and when we teach.

[ 17 ] If this demand has loomed over humanity throughout all periods of human development, then we may say: Right now, precisely because we have come so far in the field of external knowledge of nature, right now more than ever this demand stands before us: to be able to act with the spirit. That is why the social question today is first and foremost a question of education. For we are right to ask today: What must happen so that social orders and social institutions may arise among us that are less tragic than those of today, less threatening than those of today? — We can give no other answer than this: We must first place within practical life and within the social community people who have been educated out of the spirit, through activity in the spirit.

[ 18 ] Such insight—which is at the same time a continuous practice in life—is the goal of the spirituality in life that, according to the view presented here, should serve as the foundation for the education of people at various stages of life. For in childhood, the spirit is closer to the human body than it is in adulthood. In childhood, we see how the spirit shapes the physical nature. According to our current understanding of nature, what exactly is a child’s brain at birth? It is almost like the material a sculptor takes in hand when preparing a work of art.

[ 19 ] And let us look at the brain of a seven-year-old child whom we are taking under our wing for elementary school education: it has become a marvelous work of art, but a work of art that requires further refinement—refinement that must continue until the end of elementary school. Mysterious spiritual forces are initially at work shaping the human body, and we, as educators, are called upon to work alongside them; we are called upon not merely to observe the physical, but—though we must never neglect the physical—to observe it in the way the spirit works upon it, to consciously cooperate with the unconscious spirit, and to integrate ourselves not only into the natural but also into the divine order of the world.

[ 20 ] By taking education seriously, we are called not only to know God for the fulfillment of our souls, but also to will with God and to act in accordance with His divine purposes. To do this, however, we need a spiritual foundation for education. I would like to speak to you about this spiritual foundation of education over the next few days.

[ 21 ] When observing a child’s life, one must realize how essential spiritual insight and spiritual perception are for properly understanding what happens to the child—to the child’s soul and spirit—day by day. We must consider how vastly different a child’s life is in the very first days and weeks of life compared to that of the older child—and especially that of the adult. We must remember the extent to which a child needs sleep, especially in the very early stages of life. We must ask: What happens in the interplay between spirit and body when a child needs nearly 22 hours of sleep in the very early stages of life? Contemporary philosophy, as well as contemporary practice, addresses such matters by saying: Well, one simply cannot fully look into the soul of a child, just as one cannot look into the soul of an animal or into the inner life of a plant. There are simply limits to human knowledge.

[ 22 ] The spiritual perspective referred to here does not say, “Here are the limits of human knowledge”—it says: “We must draw forth so many powers of cognition from the depths of human nature that we may also gain the ability to observe the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit—in his being and in his development, just as we observe the ‘structure of a human eye or a human ear’ from a physiological perspective.”

[ 23 ] If, in our everyday lives, we lack this understanding—precisely because of our current scientific education—then we must simply cultivate it. That is why I will speak to you about the development of those insights that can provide a true understanding of the inner fabric of a child’s life. And even a simple observation—one that simply surrenders itself to life without preconceptions—already compels us to gain this insight.

[ 24 ] We observe the child. When we look at the child from the outside, we do not actually find any significant developmental milestones in the child’s life from birth to about the age of 20. We view the entire process as a continuous development.

[ 25 ] This is not the case for those who, equipped with the insight I will discuss here in the coming days, approach the observation of a child’s life. Inwardly, the child is essentially a completely different being up until about the age of 7 or 8, when the change of teeth begins, than the child is in later life—from the change of teeth until about the age of 14 or 15, when sexual maturity sets in. And infinitely significant mysteries unfold before us when we try to immerse ourselves deeply into the life of the child and ask ourselves: How does the spiritual-soul aspect work within the child up to the time of tooth replacement? How does the spiritual-soul aspect work within the child when we are tasked with educating and teaching them in elementary school? How are we ourselves to cooperate with this spiritual-soul aspect?

[ 26 ] We see, for example, how language develops instinctively—instinctively for the child and instinctively for the child’s environment as well—during the child’s early years up until the time of tooth replacement. We reflect on this a great deal today; I do not wish to speak today about the historical aspects of the origin of language, but only about the child’s process of learning to speak—how the child actually learns to speak, whether it has, so to speak, an instinct to find its way into the sounds it hears from its surroundings, or whether the impulse to develop language arises from some other connection with the environment. But if we look more closely at the child’s life, we realize that all language, all speech acquisition, is based on the imitation of what the child observes—unconsciously observes—in its surroundings through its senses. The child’s entire life up to the age of seven is a continuous imitation of what is happening in its surroundings. And the moment the child perceives something—be it a movement or a sound—an urge arises within them for an inner gesture, for reliving what is perceived from the depths of their inner being.

[ 27 ] We can only understand the child if we view it in the same way that we view the eye or the ear in an adult. The child is entirely a sensory organ. Blood is driven through its entire body in a much more vibrant way than is the case later in life. And it is precisely through a subtle understanding of physiology that we realize what the development of our sensory organs—the eye, for example—is based on. The eye develops because, in the very first years of a person’s life, blood—the blood circulation—prevails within it. Later, nervous activity increasingly predominates in the senses, and the development from blood circulation toward nervous activity is the development of sensory life in human beings. One can cultivate a keen power of observation to see how gradually, in human beings, blood life transitions into nervous life.

[ 28 ] But just as it is with the individual sense, so it is with the whole human being. The child must sleep so much because it is entirely a sensory organ, because it could not yet tolerate the outside world with its glare and its sounds. Just as the eye must close when the blinding sunlight approaches, so must this sensory organ that is the child—for the child is entirely a sensory organ—shut itself off from the world and sleep a great deal; for when it is confronted with the world, it must observe and speak inwardly. Every sound of speech arises from an inner gesture.

[ 29 ] What I am saying here, based on a spiritual insight, can—I would say—already be fully substantiated by modern science. There is a scientific discovery—allow me, since this discovery has followed me throughout my entire life, to make a personal remark: this scientific discovery is as old as I am myself; it was made in the year I was born—this scientific discovery consists in the fact that human language is based on the development of the left temporal lobe in the brain. This is formed plastically in the brain. But this formation takes place entirely during childhood itself, arising from that plasticity I have spoken to you about. And when we consider the entire connection that exists between the gestures of the right arm and the right hand—which predominate in children who develop normally—I will have more to say about left-handers and how they relate to the general population; they are an exception; but they are precisely the evidence of how the process of learning to speak is connected to every gesture—down to the very smallest detail involving the right arm and the right hand—we will see how, through an inner, mysterious connection between blood, nerves, and the convolutions of the brain, language is formed from gestures through imitation of the environment.

[ 30 ] If we had a more refined understanding of physiology than we do today, we would discover not only the passive but also the active aspect at every age. But this active aspect is particularly vibrant in that great sensory organ that is the child. That is why the child lives in its environment just as our eye lives in the environment later in life. Our eye is specially formed from the general organization of the head; it lies, I might say, in a special cavity so that it can participate in the life of the outside world. In this way, the child participates in the life of the outside world, lives entirely within the outside world, is not yet within itself, does not yet feel itself, and lives entirely with the outside world.

[ 31 ] Today, within our civilization, we are rightly developing a form of knowledge—what is known as “intellectualist” knowledge—that exists entirely within us. We believe we grasp the external world. But all thoughts—before which we stand, and whose logic alone we accept as knowledge—live entirely within us. And the child lives entirely outside of itself. May we believe that with our intellectualistic knowledge we will ever come close to what the child—which is entirely a sensory organ—experiences with the external world? We may never do so. We can only hope for this from the kind of understanding that can step entirely outside of itself, fully immersing itself in the very essence of that which lives and exists. Such understanding is only intuitive understanding, not the intellectual kind, with which we remain within ourselves, asking ourselves with every idea: “Is it logical?”—it is an understanding with which the spirit delves into the depths of life itself, an intuitive understanding. We must consciously cultivate intuitive insight; only then will we ourselves become practical enough to do with the spirit what must first be done for the child in the early years of life.

[ 32 ] But then, as the child gradually completes the process of losing its baby teeth—as the teeth that were inherited are replaced by those that have been taking shape since the very beginning of life—a new phase begins for the child’s entire life: the child is no longer merely a sensory organ but is devoted to something more spiritual than any external sensory impression. Then, particularly during the elementary school years, the child begins to take in from the environment not merely what it observes, but what lives within that observation. The child enters an age that must be built primarily upon the authority within which the child lives in relation to its educational and instructional environment.

[ 33 ] Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that when we speak to a child between the ages of 7 and 14, the child does not hear the judgment expressed in a sentence. If we force the child to listen for the judgment expressed in a single sentence, we are teaching them something that belongs to a later stage of life. What the child demands of us by virtue of its very nature is that it can believe in us, that it can have the instinctive feeling: Here is someone standing beside me who is telling me something. He can say it; he is connected to the whole world in such a way that he can say it. For me, he is the mediator between myself and the entire cosmos. This is how the child relates—not explicitly, of course, but instinctively—to another human being, namely the teacher and educator. The teacher is the mediator between the divine world and the child in his own powerlessness. And only when the educator becomes aware that he must be a natural authority—that he must be the one to whom the child can look up in a completely natural way—will he be an educator.

[ 34 ] Therefore, through our Waldorf school lessons and our Waldorf school education, we have found that the question of education is primarily a question of the teacher: What kind of person must the teacher be in order to be a natural authority, the mediator between the divine world order and the child?

[ 35 ] Well, what has become of the child? Between the ages of about 7 and 14 or 15, the child has transformed from a sensory being into a being of the soul—not yet a spirit, not yet at the stage where it places primary value on logical connections or intellectual matters; if it were, it would become inwardly ossified in the soul. For a child between the ages of 7 and 14, it is far more important that we be able to lovingly teach them something than to prove it to them. It is far more valuable if we can allow their heart to experience a lesson than to rely on logic; for the child does not yet need logic—the child needs us, needs our humanity.

[ 36 ] That is why, in Waldorf schools—especially during the elementary school years between the ages of 6, 7, and 14—we make every effort to ensure that the teacher, with an artistic love and loving artistry, is able to convey to the child what is appropriate for this stage of human life. For the art of education referred to here is based on knowing the human being—knowing what each stage of life demands of us in terms of education and instruction: What do the early years require? What is required up to the age of 7? What can be expected of children of elementary school age?—We must educate the child quite differently up to the age of 10, and quite differently again from ages 10 to 14, allowing them to acquire an understanding of humanity. The fact that we bring the child’s nature to life in our own souls in every single year—indeed, every single week—is what must form the spiritual foundation for education.

[ 37 ] And so we can say: just as the child is an imitator in the early years, so in later years it becomes a follower—one who develops spiritually in accordance with what it is capable of experiencing spiritually. Now the sense organs have become independent, and the soul has, in essence, only just emerged in the child. We must now treat this soul with infinite tenderness, constantly—as teachers and educators—entering into intimate contact with what is taking place in the child’s soul every day.

[ 38 ] In this introductory speech today, I would like to point out just one thing: for example, for every child of school age—that is, between the ages of 9 and 11—there is a critical point, a point that educators must not overlook. At this age, between 9 and 11 years old, every child—unless they are developmentally delayed—reaches a point where the question arises in their soul: How do I find my place in the world? — One must not think that this question is posed exactly as I have just described. The question arises as an indefinable feeling, an unsatisfied feeling; it arises in such a way that the child feels a greater need for support from an adult; it may even manifest itself as a strong inclination toward an adult. But we must learn to observe correctly what is going on within the child at this critical juncture. The child suddenly feels isolated. It suddenly seeks connection. Until now, it has accepted authority as a matter of course. Now it begins to ask: What is this authority all about? — Whether or not one finds the right words at this moment has an immense impact on the person’s entire future life.

[ 39 ] Just as it is immensely important for a doctor, when observing a childhood illness, to know what is happening within the organism—these are developmental processes that are significant not only for the child; if they do not proceed correctly in the child, the person will still feel the effects even in old age—so too must we become aware that: what we stimulate in the child—in terms of mental images, feelings, and impulses of the will—must not be confined to rigid concepts that the child is merely supposed to memorize or learn; the mental images and emotional impulses we convey to the child should be alive, just as our limbs are alive. The child’s hand is small. It must develop independently: we must not constrain it. The mental images, the child’s spiritual development—they are small and delicate. We must not define them with sharp contours, assuming, for example, that the child, as an adult thirty years later, will still hold these mental images exactly as the child did. We must shape the mental images we teach the child in such a way that they can grow. The Waldorf school is not meant to be a school, but rather a preparatory school, because every school should be a preparatory school for the great school that life itself is for human beings. We do not actually need to learn in school so that we can do something, but rather we must learn in school so that we can always learn from life. This is what must underlie what I would call a spiritual-physiological pedagogy and didactics. One must have a sense and feeling for what one presents to the child as something living, as something that can extend into later life. For what is developed in the child sometimes lies so deeply in the child’s soul that it goes unnoticed. It emerges later in life. One can use an image; it is meant to be only an image, but one based on truth: there are people who, at a certain stage of life, have a beneficial effect on those around them. They can—if I may put it this way—bestow a blessing. Such people exist. They do not need to speak at all; they need only be present with their blessing presence. One does not usually observe a person throughout their entire life; otherwise, one would notice the following: How were such people—who later become a blessing—raised in their childhood? Perhaps consciously by one person or another; perhaps it also happened instinctively on the part of their educators and teachers. They were raised in such a way that, as children, they learned to revere, that they learned to pray in the broadest sense of the word—to look up to something—and then they can reach down toward something. Once one has learned to look up, to revere, to be completely enveloped in authority, then one has the ability to bless, to exert a downward influence, to become an authority oneself, to become a natural authority.

[ 40 ] These are the things that do not merely exist as principles, but are meant to become an integral part of the teacher—of his entire being—by continually flowing from his mind into his actions, so that he acts from the spirit and does not merely think from the spirit; these are the things that must come to life within the teacher.

[ 41 ] I intend to explain in the coming days exactly how this can apply in detail throughout all school years, from age 7 to 14. But above all, what I wanted to emphasize today is how a certain way of being—not merely a worldview, but inner life itself—must form the spiritual foundation of education. Only then—when a person has overcome this authority, when they have reached sexual maturity and thereby gain a completely different physiological relationship to the outside world than before—do they also gain a completely different relationship to the outside world in their psychological and physical life, in the broadest sense of the term, than before. Only now does the spirit awaken within the human being. Only now does the human being seek the judgmental and the logical in everything linguistic. Only now can we hope to educate and instruct people in such a way that we appeal to their intellect. It is immensely important that we do not, as is so popular today, focus on the intellect—whether consciously or unconsciously—too early.

[ 42 ] And again, if we now ask ourselves: What is at work within the child when we see how it accepts, out of deference to authority, that which is meant to guide and direct its soul? — Well, the child does not listen in order to logically examine what we say. The child unconsciously takes in what works its way into its soul—what, emanating from the soul, also shapes and energizes the body—and absorbs it like an inspiration. And only when we understand this unconscious, wondrous inspiration that reigns throughout the child’s life from ages 7 to 14—when we can work within this state of constant inspiration—can we truly educate. To do this, we must once again acquire spiritual insight and supplement intuition with inspiration.

[ 43 ] And once the child has reached the age of 14, we make a peculiar discovery. If we teach the child—in a strictly logical manner—what it is now supposed to grasp logically, the child becomes bored; at first, they listen when we present everything logically in this way; but if the young man and the young woman are expected merely to think through our logic, they gradually grow weary. Even at this stage of life, as teachers, we need something other than mere logic. We can observe this on a large scale.

[ 44 ] Take, for example, a researcher like Ernst Haeckel, who is completely immersed in the external world of nature. He himself is immensely interested in everything he observes under the microscope and everything he studies. When this is conveyed to the students, they learn it, but they are no longer able to develop the same interest. As teachers, we must possess something within ourselves that is different from what the child possesses. As the child, upon reaching sexual maturity, advances toward logic, we must carry within ourselves the pictorial, the imagination. If we ourselves are able to cast what we are to teach the young person into images—so that they gain images of the world and its value and meaning, which we unfold as in a higher art—and if we unfold these images and allow those listening, those being educated and taught, to develop the logic themselves, then what we have to say will truly capture them.

[ 45 ] Thus, in this third epoch of life, we are directed toward imagination, just as we were first directed toward intuition and inspiration. And we must now seek that spiritual foundation which, if we are to be teachers, will enable us to work from imagination, inspiration, and intuition—to act spiritually, not merely to think spiritually.

[ 46 ] That is what I wanted to say by way of introduction.