The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Upbringing of Young Children and the Educator's Basic Attitude

[ 1 ] It might seem as if the art of education we are about to discuss here seeks to lead us away from the practical realities of life into a remote, purely spiritual realm—as if human development were to be shifted too heavily toward the spiritual side. That might seem to be the case based on the arguments I have presented so far, which, after all, had to address the spiritual foundation of what the educator should acquire as a basis for understanding. But this is only an illusion. For in truth, the very art of education that is to be achieved through the worldview advocated here strives toward the most practical of life goals. Why was the spiritual aspect of the human being discussed first? Because, within this worldview, all discussion of the spiritual is aimed primarily at answering the question: How does one develop the human physical organism in childhood and adolescence through conscious, proper care based on a spiritual foundation?

[ 2 ] At first glance, it might even seem like a stark contradiction that a worldview focused on the spiritual, when it comes to the art of education, places the greatest emphasis first and foremost on the development of the physical organism. But this contradiction will be resolved to the extent that one pays attention to what will be discussed here in the following sections as we explore the topic of education. Through this exploration, the contradiction will dissolve more easily than through formulaic statements that could be offered here at this point. For now, it should simply be noted that when discussing educational issues today, one actually finds oneself in a very peculiar situation. For if one finds much that needs reforming in the educational system, one is in effect saying that one is not entirely satisfied with one’s own upbringing. Essentially, one is claiming that one considers one’s own upbringing to have been exceptionally poor. And now, despite this poor upbringing—which one attributes to oneself and about which one is so critical—one is supposed to know quite well how to educate properly! This is the first thing that currently introduces a contradiction into all reformist discourse on the art of education.

[ 3 ] The second point is something that, when one speaks about the art of education, always—I would say—fills one with a quiet sense of shame. For one is, of course, aware that by speaking, one is addressing an audience. One speaks about how children should be educated, and that they should be educated differently than is customary today. So, essentially, one is always saying: You are all poorly brought up. And one even appeals to those who are poorly brought up, so that they come to believe that children must be brought up better. One thus assumes that both the speaker and the listener actually understand quite well how children should be brought up, even though they are supposed to feel that they themselves have been brought up extremely poorly.

[ 4 ] Well, that is a contradiction. But it is one that is entirely inherent in life itself. It can really only be resolved by the view of the art of education that is advocated here. One can know extremely well what is lacking in education and what should be improved in it, just as one can know that a painting is well executed without ever being able to develop the skills within oneself to paint such a good picture. As a sensitive person, one will always claim to be able to appreciate the beauty of a Raphael painting; but unless one is a painter, one will not claim to be able to paint a Raphael-like picture. Yes, it would be quite good if people today thought that way. But they do not think that way about the knowledge of the art of education that they may possess; rather, they immediately begin to discuss how one should educate. But that is like someone who is not a painter—and cannot be one—standing before a poorly painted picture and trying to show how it should be painted well.

[ 5 ] This discussion is based on the perspective that one must not only have a general understanding of what it means to educate well, but that, as an educator and teacher, one must also grasp the technical aspects—that is, the specific elements of the art of education—just as an artist must grasp his or her art. One must have a sense that the practical application of teaching and education must be internalized. That is why, in the preceding discussion, I first attempted to clarify the fundamental basis of the visual approach for this skill; and I would now like to continue this line of thought. For just as observation and the handling of form and color are essential to the painter, so too is knowledge of the spiritual nature of the human being essential to the educator.

[ 6 ] It is very easy to say: A person develops throughout their life in accordance with their innate dispositions and in adaptation to their environment; and they develop in such a way that, over the course of their life, their innate and acquired faculties are successively brought to fruition. But that is not enough. From the preceding description, it can be seen that human beings are threefold beings, that their thinking is bound to the nervous-sensory system in the organism—and indeed is bound to this system in the sense of physical dependence. Feeling is linked to the rhythmic system, primarily to the respiratory and circulatory systems; and the system of the will is based on the motor and metabolic systems.

[ 7 ] These three systems in human beings develop in such a way that each follows a different timeline, and that the peak of this development occurs at a different stage of life for each. In the first stage of life, up to the time of tooth replacement—as I have already mentioned—the child is, in a more than symbolic sense, entirely a sensory organ. It is, so to speak, entirely head; and all of its development originates from the nervous-sensory system. There lie the sources of the formative forces of the entire organism. The nervous-sensory system, as the principal agent, permeates the entire organism; and all impressions from the external world act throughout the entire organism, whereas in later life they act physically only at the periphery of the sensory system, but further into the body only psychically.

[ 8 ] One might say: The mature human being is organized in such a way that light, with its physical effects, stops at the eye and sends only the sensation-imbued mental image of light further into the organism. In the case of the child, however, every blood cell is, so to speak, physically stimulated from within by the light. However, these effects should not be understood as if they could be demonstrated by crude physical methods. The child is still entirely devoted to the effects of those ethereal essences that, in later life, act only on the surface of the body, in the sense organs, so that the human being can develop something entirely different within. Until the child’s teeth begin to fall out, the entire organism is permeated by the senses; the more mature adult is sensorial on the surface but has a soul within. Consider this in concrete terms. An adult who is in the company of a very young child—an infant—becomes, with their entire inner experience, the child’s educator. Suppose there is a worried person at the child’s side—one who has good reason to feel worried. In a mature person, the physical effects of these emotional worries—as manifested in constitution, facial expressions, and movement—are only faintly apparent. When we are worried, our mouth is always somewhat dry. And when worry becomes habitual in certain people—when it persists—they go about with a constantly dry mouth, a sticky tongue, a bitter taste in their mouth, and even slight shortness of breath. In adults, these physical conditions are merely subtle undertones of life.

[ 9 ] However, a child growing up alongside adults imitates even the weakest physical states of the caregiver. It adapts entirely to the physiognomic expression, to what it perceives, to the way the adult speaks with concern and feels with concern, because it is, after all, entirely a sensory being. Subtle interactions take place between the adult and the child. If the adult has a worry that is emotional but manifests itself in physical symptoms, the child, as an imitator, perceives these physical symptoms and shapes its own inner state accordingly, just as the eye is permeated by the effect of light. The child absorbs an inner gesture, an inner facial expression, which manifests itself through a sticky tongue and a bitter taste. A constitutional imprint of the adult’s physical experience develops throughout the child’s entire organism. It adopts the drawn-out pallor of the face that the worried adult exhibits, but it cannot absorb the psychological content of the worry; it merely imitates the physical consequence of the worry. And the result is that the child’s physical constitution is immediately taken over by the spiritual formative forces that have their seat in the sensory-nervous system. The inner physical and finer organs develop in accordance with the physical image of worry that the child has taken in. The child develops an organism predisposed to worry, which later also readily absorbs life experiences as worry—experiences that would not elicit such a response in a different constitution.

[ 10 ] In this way, the child is shaped into a caring person through its physical organism. One must possess such an understanding of the subtler effects of life if one wishes to be an educator in the true sense. For teachers and educators, these are prerequisites, just as the ability to observe the effects of colors is for a painter.

[ 11 ] The child’s life unfolds in the manner described until the teeth begin to fall out. It is an inner struggle that takes place within the child’s inner being. However, one can only form a true judgment of this struggle through an understanding of the spiritual side of the world and of human beings. Viewed more from the outside, it is a struggle between a person’s inherited traits and their adaptation to the world around them while they are a small child.

[ 12 ] Human beings are born with certain inherited characteristics. Anyone capable of observing a child during its first days and years of life can recognize this. This is, in fact, a much-discussed topic in mainstream science; and researchers seek to uncover the details of hereditary relationships through external observation. Heredity is the most important factor in the very earliest stages of a child’s life; but increasingly, the human being’s adaptation to the world comes to the fore. The inherited characteristics are gradually transformed in such a way that the human being not only carries within himself what he has inherited from his parents and ancestors, but is also open—through all his senses, through his soul, through his entire spirit—to the world around him. Otherwise, they become a person frozen in an otherworldly state—a person who desires only what is in line with their inherited traits and stands in contrast to the world around them. The degree of contentment in life that would otherwise be theirs is diminished.

[ 13 ] But we must educate people who are receptive to everything that is happening in the world, who, every day when they see something new, can adjust their feelings and judgments in light of that new thing. Only such people will not be selfishly closed off within themselves, but will face the world freely and openly; and only this makes one capable of working together with the world and other people in life.

[ 14 ] An educator or teacher will possess a true gift for observing such things if they form their outlook based on an understanding of the spiritual human being, in the manner I described in the previous reflection. One must be able to observe in every detail how, in the first years of a child’s life, heredity is in an inner struggle with adaptation to the world.

[ 15 ] Just try, with all your human cognitive devotion, to study the marvelous process that takes place when the first teeth are replaced by the second set. The first teeth are inherited. They almost look as if they were outwardly useless to the world. And little by little, another tooth covers each of these inherited teeth. In this process of covering, the shape of the first tooth is utilized; but the shape of the second tooth, which then remains, becomes somewhat different—it is adapted to the world. What happens there with the teeth is taking place throughout the child’s entire organism at this stage of life. The change of teeth is merely a symptom of other processes that are, however, not so readily apparent. At the time of the change of teeth, the child transforms from a being shaped by heredity into a being of the world. When a human being is born into the world, they carry within them an organism shaped by heredity. Over the course of the first seven years of life, they form a new organism over it. Since this entire process is physical, it is at the same time the effect of the child’s spiritual and soul life. And anyone who works alongside the child as an educator must strive to guide and direct this spiritual and soul life in such a way that it does not develop in opposition to the healthy organism, but rather in harmony with it. As an educator, one must therefore know what must take place spiritually and psychologically within the child so that the child can form a healthy organism over and above the inherited one. One must do what is necessary for the child’s spiritual life and know that it is precisely through this that one cares for the physical in the right way, because the spiritual thereby becomes the shaper of the physical. If one pursues the thought I hinted at in the introduction to this lecture, one also comes to realize the following: As a teacher, as an educator, one enters a classroom. One really must not form a mental image of oneself as one of the very smartest people. At most, one may regard oneself as relatively intelligent. This certainly leads the teacher to adopt a truly healthy attitude. Entering the classroom with this awareness, one must tell oneself: Among the children I am to educate, there may be one who is quite intelligent—one who will be much more intelligent later in life than I am. If one were to educate someone who is predisposed to be much more intelligent than oneself only up to the level of intelligence that one possesses, one would be educating them in such a way that they would fall short of what they could have become. That must not happen under any circumstances. The correct approach is to educate someone who is predisposed to such intelligence in such a way that they will become much more intelligent later in life than one is oneself. One must be able to educate in a way that develops aptitudes one does not possess oneself. But this means: There is something in human beings that one, as an educator or teacher, cannot grasp at all. This is something one should approach with timid reverence; and it unfolds through the art of education without one imposing it on the pupil as a reflection of one’s own abilities. This, however, leads to the correct answer to the question that has just been raised.

[ 16 ] When one is an adult going through life, one often knows exceptionally well what the right thing to do is; yet one cannot carry it out. One does not feel the strength to do so. Sometimes what lies quite hidden within a person is precisely what renders them powerless in the face of what they ought to do. A true understanding of human nature then reveals that it is the physical organism that harbors, somewhere within itself, something akin to the “imitation of worry” that I have described. This imitation has become ingrained in the organism; a habitual orientation in life has developed through the physical organism. However, a situation may arise in which the world demands something of a person that does not at all correspond to their organization in terms of worry. But this attitude has arisen through interaction with the educator. One must bear the consequences of the attitude of the “worry organism” acquired through imitation in childhood. If one wishes to practice the art of education, one must be able to look into such subtle interrelationships of life. — If one understands this correctly, one will say to oneself: The educator, the teacher, has above all the task of shaping the human body as healthily as it can possibly be shaped; that is, to nurture everything in the pupil’s spiritual nature that ensures the human physical organism will, in later life, pose as little an obstacle as possible to what the spirit desires. It is therefore required of the educator that, in the practice of his art, he behave like a gardener who plants a seed in the ground and tends to it. The gardener cannot infuse any of his own nature into the plant’s growth forces. He must simply give the plant the opportunity to unfold its own powers. Thus, the art of education must consist in the educator creating the opportunities through which the pupil can develop freely. It will then also offer the possibility that a pupil can freely develop higher abilities than those of the teacher, and that the pupil’s physical organism will not become a replica of the teacher’s.

[ 17 ] A look at the stage of development that scientific knowledge has currently reached also reveals the extent to which an understanding of the spiritual nature of the human being can serve as a foundation for the care of the physical organism. In general, it can be said that a correct understanding of this knowledge reveals, in many fields, that the science of the spiritual side of the world outlined here emerges—without any element of fantasy—as the necessary continuation of natural science. One fails to see this necessity only as long as one limits scientific thinking to the results of sensory observation and mechanical experimentation. But the insights derived from these cannot provide a foundation for human education. For in human beings, natural processes are elevated to a higher level by spiritual forces.

[ 18 ] Consider a single fact. It is extraordinarily significant, for example, what the English physician Dr. Clifford Allbutt concluded from his studies on the influence of worry on the development of internal organs, particularly the kidneys. People who are under the influence of worry for long periods of time show, after a while, a deterioration in kidney function. Such a beautiful scientific finding points the way toward the exploration of the spiritual side of the world. But this path must be pursued further. And that can only be done through methods of Spiritual Science. Through these methods, the whole human being is vividly grasped as a spiritual entity, and only then is the proper light shed on such an individual scientific fact.

[ 19 ] In the art of education, one can only make use of such individual facts presented by the natural sciences if one views them from the perspective that reveals the overall picture of the human being as a spiritual-soul being. From this perspective, however, one also views the functioning of the physical organism under the influence of the spiritual. With such insight, one interacts correctly with the child.

[ 20 ] The tragedy of our materialistically oriented age is that, viewed from the outside, it discovers many physical facts but lacks an understanding of their connection, which lies in the spiritual realm. The understanding of our time focuses all attention on the physical; yet it lacks insight into the significance of the physical, of the material. Materialistically oriented science is precisely incapable of grasping the significance of the material. The study of the material without a sense of the spiritual—which alone illuminates the material—is like groping around in a dark room. The science of the spiritual will reveal precisely how the spirit works its way into the physical realm everywhere. When knowledge is applied in this direction, people will not worship a mystical fantasy as the spirit, but will trace the spirit in all its individual activities within the material world. For only when one recognizes the spirit as the creative force that brings matter into being everywhere does one cultivate true knowledge; not when, as a mystic, one worships an abstract spirit enthroned in a cloud-cuckoo-land and, moreover, views all that is material as part of a non-spiritual existence.

[ 21 ] One must fully understand how, in very young children—roughly up to the age of 7—nervous-sensory activity, rhythmic activity, respiratory and circulatory activity, motor activity, and metabolic activity all interact with one another, but in such a way that nervous-sensory activity is the dominant force. In children, the rhythms of respiration and blood circulation, as well as metabolic activity, are processes whose nature can only be fully understood when one perceives the nervous-sensory activity resonating within them.

[ 22 ] When a child looks at a face furrowed with worry, this initially affects the child as a sensory impression. But this impression extends to the child’s breathing, and from there to the child’s entire motor and metabolic systems.

[ 23 ] When educating a child at the age following the loss of baby teeth—that is, around the age of 7—the nervous-sensory system no longer predominates as it did before. This system is now relatively separated from the body’s other functions; it turns more toward the outside world. It comes more to the surface of the physical organization. From the change of teeth until puberty, the rhythmic system predominates in the child. And this must be taken into account above all in elementary school.

[ 24 ] In elementary school, children are at the stage between the loss of baby teeth and puberty. It is important to understand that all teaching and education must, above all, influence the rhythmic system. Any activity directed at a child that seeks to influence anything other than this rhythmic system is misguided. But what influences the rhythmic system and operates within it? It is that which approaches the human being through artistic forms and artistic activity.

[ 25 ] Consider how everything musical is connected to the rhythmic system. Music lives as rhythm, which continues within the human being’s own rhythmic system. The inner human being itself becomes a lyre, becomes a violin. Its entire rhythmic system embodies within itself that which the violin and the piano express musically.

[ 26 ] And just as with music, the same is true—in a more subtle, more intimate way—of sculpture and painting. The harmonies of color and the melodies of color are also experienced within the human being as inner processes of the rhythmic organ system.

[ 27 ] If we are to stand alongside the child in the right way as educators and teachers, we must understand that, for this age group, we need to present the entire curriculum to the child in an artistic manner. The essential task of the elementary school is to structure all instruction for children in such a way that it is attuned to the child’s rhythmic system. In all teaching and education, we should conduct ourselves alongside the child in such a way that, under the influence of our behavior, the child’s rhythmic system unfolds freely and harmoniously.

[ 28 ] Just how little this is taken into account today can be seen from the fact that scientists are striving to obtain immensely valuable findings about the nature of the child’s constitution, which are then interpreted without regard for the spiritual aspect and applied to teaching.

[ 29 ] Experiments are being conducted in experimental psychology. Researchers want to know how quickly a child becomes fatigued during this or that activity, and they want to structure instruction based on these findings regarding fatigue. As scientific findings, the results of this experimental psychology are very good and valuable. However, they may only be applied to teaching once they are understood in the light of an understanding of the spiritual nature of the human being.

[ 30 ] No objection is to be raised here to the excellence of scientific experiments in this field. But when one views the whole matter in the light of spiritual thinking, one realizes: If a child—who is between the stages of losing baby teeth and reaching sexual maturity—becomes fatigued to a certain degree, then you have not acted correctly upon their rhythmic system, but upon a different system. For the rhythmic system does not become fatigued throughout one’s entire life. The heart beats day and night throughout one’s entire life. A person becomes fatigued through their intellectual activity and through their metabolic and motor systems. If one knows that one must influence the rhythmic system during the described stage of life, then one also realizes that the experiments on fatigue reveal where one has acted incorrectly, where one has not taken sufficient account of the rhythmic system. If one encounters a child who is excessively fatigued, one must tell oneself: You must do something to structure the lesson so that it does not have a tiring effect on the child. If one does not think spiritually, one will want to address fatigue through all sorts of other means, but will not ensure its prevention through the structure of the lesson.

[ 31 ] It is not a matter of standing up today and saying: Our natural science is bad; we must fight against it. — That would never occur to a spiritually minded person. But they say: We need precisely these higher perspectives in order to apply scientific knowledge to life. — And what has been shown here regarding the physical aspect of life—or rather, one aspect of life—also applies to the soul and to the moral nature of human beings.

[ 32 ] One might say: It is precisely the ability to gradually guide the child to develop moral impulses within themselves in the right way that is the greatest and most significant issue in education. But we do not instill moral impulses in the child by giving them commandments, by telling them: “You should do this; it should be done this way; this is good”—and by trying to prove to them, through an appeal to their intellect, that something ought to be and is good. Or by telling them, “This is bad, this is evil, you must not do that”—and trying to prove to them that it is bad. The way a person intellectually relates to good and evil, to the entire moral order of the world, must first awaken. And it awakens only when, with sexual maturity, the rhythmic system has essentially fulfilled its role in the entire course of human development, and the intellectual aspect then matures to full development. Only then do the proper moral impulses arise in a person with the necessary strength, when, at the right stage of maturity, they experience the inner satisfaction of being able to form a moral judgment about existence itself. The point is not to hand down moral judgments, but to nurture the seeds for the formation of one’s own moral powers. One should not instill moral judgment in the child. One should prepare the child so that, when it awakens to full capacity for judgment upon reaching sexual maturity, it can form its own moral judgment through the observation of life. This is least likely to be achieved by imparting ready-made commandments to the child. It is achieved, however, by setting an example or by presenting role models. One should provide the child with mental images of goodness through descriptions of people who have been good or are good, or through imaginative portrayals of good people. Through this, the child’s rhythmic system comes alive in its perception of the good. The child experiences the ebb and flow of feelings that continue to vibrate subtly within the rhythmic system. And because the rhythmic system is particularly active in the child during this stage of life, a sense of approval or disapproval of good and evil can develop. The appeal is not to the intellect, but to sympathy for the good—which appears before the child’s soul in the image—and to antipathy toward evil. In this way, the soul is prepared so that the emotional judgment can later mature into an intellectual judgment at the appropriate age. What matters is not the imparting of “thou shalt,” but rather evoking an aesthetic judgment in the child, so that the good appeals to the child and the child feels sympathy for it, and so that the child feels displeasure and antipathy toward evil when its sensibilities are confronted with moral realities.

[ 33 ] There is a great difference between proceeding in this way and appealing to the intellect through intellectually formulated precepts, to which the child is only supposed to awaken later, when it has already outgrown its upbringing, when it is already supposed to be a person being educated by life. Something in the human constitution withers away if one does not prepare the person in such a way that, at the right time, they experience the inner satisfaction of awakening to moral strength. If one proceeds differently than has been described, the person will not awaken to morality but, at the appropriate age, will only be able to have an abstract recollection of what is regarded as a moral precept by others. One provides the child with the proper preparation during his or her rhythmic life span by fostering an aesthetic appreciation of what is good and an aesthetic aversion to what is evil, for it is in aesthetic sensibility that the seed lies from which the intellectual must unfold. A directly developed intellectual judgment is like a flower cut off from its stem and root.

[ 34 ] When a child awakens after reaching sexual maturity and possesses only memories of preformed moral and intellectual judgments, it feels inwardly enslaved. It may not tell itself that it is inwardly enslaved, but it lacks for the rest of its life that immensely important life experience, which finds expression in the vague feeling: the moral sense within me has awakened through life itself; I have developed this moral judgment on my own; it is my own.

[ 35 ] The fact that this inner satisfaction can be experienced later in life is not achieved through abstract moral instruction; it must be properly prepared for.

[ 36 ] Thus, in all aspects of education and teaching, it is the “how” that matters. And it can be said—both for a life more oriented toward the external world and for a life oriented toward the moral world—that education and instruction are only carried out correctly when the educator, drawing on an understanding of the spiritual, can observe what takes place throughout the stages of life in the sensory-nervous system, in the rhythmic, respiratory, and circulatory systems, and in the metabolic and locomotor systems—both individually and in their interaction. One must know how to delve into the physical from the spiritual, and be able to observe how the spirit continually undulates and weaves within the physical.

[ 37 ] While an understanding of human nature must first be sought for the sake of the art of teaching and education, in practical life the crucial question is what attitude, what state of mind is present in the teacher or educator precisely because he or she holds a worldview rooted in spiritual life. For such a worldview, when honestly acquired, is not merely a system of thought but is accompanied by a certain disposition. And the best way to see what kind of disposition this evokes in a person is to look at many of our fellow human beings in the present day.

[ 38 ] Past eras certainly had their dark sides; and there is much in the ideas and attitudes of people from those times that one should by no means wish to see return; but anyone who looks into the historical life of humanity with a certain intuition will nevertheless be able to see how little inner joy people derived from their spiritual life at that time, and how, for many people today, it is precisely the lack of such a spiritual life that gives rise to profound, perplexing questions about all possible joy and security in life. Contemporary humanity is able to provide itself with only a limited answer to the inner questions of destiny that develop agonizingly in the soul when contemplating the world. If one is truly unhappy within oneself—justifiably unhappy—there is still the possibility of looking to something in the cosmos to find a balance for one’s inner unhappiness. This, however, depends on a person’s ability to find something within their soul at the right moment that brings about this balance. An inner connection to the spiritual world can always lead one to find such a thing. A worldview focused solely on the sensory world cannot. But people today are not strong enough, when they are overwhelmed by personal troubles, to seek solace in contemplating the cosmos. Why? Because people today have little opportunity, in their upbringing and development, to cultivate within themselves what one might call a sense of gratitude for what the spirit of the cosmos has given them.

[ 39 ] In fact, all of our higher feelings should be able to begin with the fundamental feeling of gratitude that the cosmic world has brought us forth from itself and placed us within itself. A worldview, a philosophy, that limits itself to abstract concepts and does not radiate in gratitude from the life of feeling toward the cosmos is not a complete philosophy. It is a philosophy for intellectual activity, not for the experience of the entire human organism. However, mental activity that cannot warm the rest of the organism does not bring happiness, but rather unhappiness. For it develops like a foreign body, like a spiritual tumor. The concluding chapter of every philosophy should culminate in this feeling of gratitude toward the cosmic powers. And even if the author does not state this directly, it should nevertheless be evoked in the reader. Above all, however, it is the teacher, the educator, who must possess this gratitude. Every person entrusted with the upbringing of a child must also possess it instinctively. It is also the first significant insight achieved through spiritual understanding: that one feels gratitude for the fact of having been entrusted with the upbringing of a child. Awe for the mysterious nature of the child—awe and gratitude are inseparable in this regard—must be the starting point of the mindset with which the educator approaches his or her task. There is only one attitude toward the child that provides the right impulses for raising and teaching; and that is precisely a religious attitude toward the child.

[ 40 ] One feels a sense of the sacred toward many things. One feels a sense of the sacred toward a flower in the field when we allow it to affect us as a creature of the divine-spiritual world order. One feels this way toward lightning when it flashes in the clouds, and when one can sense how it is embedded within the divine-spiritual world order. One must feel this way above all else when, from the very depths of the world order, the highest possible revelation—through which it is revealed what the world is—meets us in the child. This state of mind is one of the most important impulses in the art of education.

[ 41 ] The technique of education is different from the technique applied to the non-spiritual. The technique of education presupposes, in every instance, that the educator acts out of religious and moral impulses in everything he does. One can feel this way even toward a child with a difficult disposition. One will then not approach the child with antipathy, but with a sense of tragedy.

[ 42 ] Now one might say: in this day and age, when people take many things—some of which may be of lesser importance—so terribly objectively, there are still those who find it inappropriate to feel religious compassion toward a child who may be behaving like a complete good-for-nothing. One might say: Why should I feel any sense of tragedy toward a child who is turning out to be a good-for-nothing? In our age, with its terribly objective mindset, even some parents admit that their children are good-for-nothings, whereas in earlier times that was not common; back then, every child was “well-behaved” in the eyes of their parents. That was actually a better atmosphere than today’s.

[ 43 ] But it can certainly evoke a sense of tragedy when one is given a child who is difficult to raise—as a gift from the divine-spiritual world order, indeed as an instance of its highest revelation. If one is able to experience this tragedy, it is precisely what carries one safely past the pitfalls of the art of child-rearing.

[ 44 ] If one can receive even a wayward child with gratitude, and if one can feel a sense of tragedy about it, and if one can develop the impulse to act precisely from this tragedy, then one truly feels the right kind of gratitude toward the divine world order—by being able to understand even the bad as something divine, even if this understanding is a very complicated matter.

[ 45 ] Gratitude is, above all, the fundamental attitude that should permeate the teacher and the educator as they guide a child’s development during the first stage of life, up to the time the child’s baby teeth are replaced.

[ 46 ] A new element emerges in the second stage of life. The child’s development, which is based above all on the rhythmic system, requires that all of the educator’s activities have an artistic character. One will never achieve what is intended to have an effect on the child’s environment unless one can imbue the religious attitude toward the child—which must be sustained—with an intense love for our educational deeds and our educational activities. For it is in this love that the power resides which leads the educator to an activity that is perceived by the child with aesthetic love.

[ 47 ] From the time a child’s baby teeth fall out until sexual maturity, nothing has an effect on the child unless it is imbued in the educator with a love for the act of education itself. What an educator does out of love is perceived by the child at this age as something the child must make its own in order to become a human being.

[ 48 ] The art of education cannot come from the intellect alone; rather, it comes solely from that which reveals a deep sense of gratitude and love for the act of educating.

[ 49 ] In the art of education practiced at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, much greater emphasis is placed on the teacher’s character than on the intellectual, technical mastery of abstract teaching methods he or she has acquired. The teacher should not only be able to love the child, but should also be able to love his or her method, because it is through the application of this method that the child develops. The latter is what matters. Being enamored of a method simply because it is one’s own is not sufficient for an educator. The teacher should love his or her method because of what the child becomes. Loving children alone is not enough for the teacher; rather, one must love teaching, love educating, and love it with the objectivity that is revealed in the child—this is acquired when one approaches one’s task from a spiritual foundation for physical, emotional, and moral education. And when one possesses this true love for education and for teaching as a disposition, then one will also nurture the child through to sexual maturity in such a way that one can truly entrust the child to freedom—to the free use of its intellectual faculties in later life.

[ 50 ] If one has conceived the child with religious reverence and raised it with love and care until it reaches sexual maturity, then one can also have the right experience toward the developing human being: to have him or her by one’s side in freedom as our equal. If one is then in a position to continue to influence the person through education, one will be able to interact with the now-liberated being on an intellectual level. By educating in the manner suggested—by not interfering beforehand with what is meant to develop freely, but rather allowing the spirit to awaken gradually through what one does as an educator—the individual, upon reaching sexual maturity, will experience his or her own being as one that is awakening; and this moment of awakening will be the source of a power that continues to have an effect throughout the rest of one’s life.

[ 51 ] One should not say to oneself: “You must instill this or that into the child’s soul,” but rather, “You must have reverence for the child’s spirit.” You cannot develop this spirit; it develops on its own. It is your responsibility to remove the obstacles to its development and to provide it with what will prompt it to develop. You can remove the obstacles to the spirit in the physical realm and, to a lesser extent, in the soul as well. What the spirit is meant to learn, it learns by your removing these obstacles. The spirit begins to develop through life even in the earliest years of childhood. But its life is the one that the educator helps unfold within the child’s environment. The greatest self-denial is the educator’s task. He must live in the child’s environment in such a way that the child’s spirit can, out of sympathy, unfold its own life in accordance with the educator’s life. One must never seek to make children into copies of oneself. What was in the educator himself—whether through coercion or tyranny—must not live on in them, nor even in the time after they have outgrown school and education. One must be able to educate in such a way as to remove the physical and spiritual obstacles to that which, emerging anew from a divine world order in every age, enters the world through the children, and to create an environment for the pupil through which his spirit can enter life in complete freedom.

[ 52 ] The three golden rules of the art of education and teaching—which must be the very mindset and driving force behind the work of every teacher and every educator, which must not be understood merely in intellectual terms but must be grasped by the whole person—must be:

[ 53 ] Religious gratitude toward the world, as revealed in the child, combined with the awareness that the child is a divine mystery to be unraveled through the art of education.

[ 54 ] A method of upbringing based on love, through which the child instinctively educates itself, so that one does not jeopardize the child’s freedom, which must also be respected where it is the unconscious element of the organic power of growth.