The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] In these five lectures, I set out to characterize, in broad strokes, the guiding principles of Waldorf school pedagogy and methodology. My aim this time was not so much to go into details as to attempt to capture the entire spirit of the pedagogy that is meant to flow from anthroposophy. For in fact, people today may need—perhaps even more than the details, the necessity of which should not be underestimated—a thoroughgoing renewal, a thoroughgoing revitalization of their entire spiritual life. And one can say: In all spiritual professions, what is needed above all else for the near future—besides the spiritual content they require—is a renewal of enthusiasm that can develop from a spiritual understanding of the world and a corresponding worldview. And the fact that the educator—the artist of the soul, for that is what the educator must become—needs this enthusiasm most of all is something that is already beginning to be felt today in the widest circles. Perhaps people are still only searching along paths that cannot lead to the goal, because a general despondency still prevails regarding a thorough search, particularly in the spiritual realm. The foundation of our pedagogy is to find a methodology of teaching, to discover the conditions for education by reading human nature—by that very reading of human nature that gradually reveals the essence of the human being, so that we can follow this revelation with what we bring into teaching and education, from the curriculum to the class schedule.

[ 2 ] Let us try to put ourselves in the mindset of a person engaged in this kind of reading. After all, we have seen how the child is, in a natural way, almost religiously devoted to its immediate human surroundings; how it is an imitative being; and how it consciously shapes within itself, according to its will, what it experiences unconsciously and subconsciously from its surroundings. Not in terms of content—for the soul is, by nature, a spirit that reveals itself outwardly—but in terms of its entire configuration, a religious character—I would say—is present in the child’s physicality from the moment it enters the world until the change of teeth. And since the human being does not enter the world without preconditions—since he or she comes not merely with the physical hereditary forces of the ancestral line, but with the forces brought from previous earthly lives—this devotion may initially be directed toward the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the wise and the foolish, the skillful and the unskillful. It is our task to influence the child’s environment in such a way that, deep within their thoughts and feelings, the child may become a being who imitates the good, the true, the beautiful, and the wise.

[ 3 ] If one thinks this way, life is brought into one’s interaction with the child, and education naturally becomes part of that life in the interaction with the child. Education is then not merely sought after in individual actions, but is lived out. And only when education is lived out in the child’s environment—so that it is not imposed on the child—does the child develop in the right way into a human being.

[ 4 ] But that which is so naturally instilled as a devotion—which might be called religious—in priestly upbringing, as I have described it—must be reawakened in the education and instruction that take place between the change of teeth and puberty, and awakened on a higher spiritual level during the child’s second phase of life, between the change of teeth and puberty. We educate the child by giving everything we present to it a pictorial form, by making education an artistic and yet genuinely human, subjective-objective activity. We educate the child so that, aesthetically devoted to beauty and absorbing the pictorial within itself, it stands before the educator and teacher. The point here is that the religious is replaced by a natural, artistic perception of the world. Now, inherent in this natural artistry—which must not be confused with the extravagant artistry so prevalent in our culture—in this purely human artistry within the child lies what now emerges as moral behavior toward the world.

[ 5 ] If we understand this correctly, we come to realize that we cannot reach a child between the time of losing baby teeth and reaching sexual maturity by giving them commandments. We cannot reach the child morally before the change of teeth if we moralize in any way. In the first stage of life, this has no access to the child’s soul. The only thing that has access is what we do in terms of morality—what the child can observe in the way morality is lived out in the actions, gestures, thoughts, and feelings of the human environment. And in the second stage of life, between the loss of baby teeth and puberty, we still cannot reach the child if we give them moral commandments. They have no inner connection yet to what lies in moral commandments. Moral commandments are just empty words to them. We can reach the child at this age only if we stand before them as a natural authority, so that the child—without having an abstract understanding of what beauty, truth, goodness, and so on are—can develop within their feelings the impulse: In the teacher and educator standing before me is embodied goodness, embodied truth, embodied beauty. — If one understands the child correctly, one knows this: The child does not yet possess an abstract, intellectual understanding of the revelation of wisdom, beauty, and goodness, but the revelation does exist—the child perceives it in the teacher’s and educator’s gaze, in the movement of their hand, and in the way the teacher’s and educator’s words are spoken. The teacher and educator themselves are what the child—without uttering many words—calls truth, beauty, and goodness, calling them by the revelations of the heart. And so it must be. And when the teacher and educator meet the child’s needs at this stage of life, two things gradually develop within the child. First, a sense—an inner aesthetic sense—of what is pleasing and what is displeasing, including in moral matters. Goodness appeals to the child when we present it in the right way through our entire personality, by setting an example for the child. And we must structure education so that the natural need to take pleasure in goodness can develop, just as the aversion to evil can. How does the child ask itself this question? Not in explicit intellectual words, but inwardly and wholeheartedly it asks: Should I do something? I may do it, because the teacher does it. Should I refrain from doing something? I must refrain, because the teacher indicates to me that it must not be done. — In this way, the child experiences the world through the educator: the world in its goodness, the world in its evil, the world in its beauty, the world in its ugliness, in its truth, and in its falsehood. And this interaction with the teacher and educator—this interplay of the hidden forces between the child’s heart and the educator’s heart—is the most important part of the methodology of teaching, and therein lie the essential conditions for education.

[ 6 ] Thus, it is precisely the period between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity that is the stage in which a sense of approval and disapproval regarding what is moral and immoral begins to develop. But then, in all that is developing within the child as moral sentiment, something emerges in the background: that which was initially present in the child in a natural way during the first stage of life—this devotion to the surroundings, which might be called religious—reappears, I would say, as something resurgent in a different form within this entire moral development. And we can easily—if we have the skillful spiritual power as teachers and educators—now guide what arises as a delight in the good and a distaste for the evil toward that which spiritually permeates the manifestations of nature. At first, the child is, as it were, naturally devoted to nature itself; for whatever stands out in the environment as moral is perceived by the child in nature; the child senses, imitates, and internalizes the moral impulse. But what is natural here—this religious aspect—is transformed, metamorphosed into the soul as we develop a delight in the good.

[ 7 ] And consider what this means: that, under the spell of the fully unconscious, we allow the religious to develop in the child in a natural way—through pure imitation—until the child’s teeth begin to fall out. In this way, we first introduce the religious into that stage of a person’s life where we cannot yet encroach upon the power of their inner, free individuality. We educate in harmony with nature and do not interfere with the soul and spirit. And when, between the loss of baby teeth and puberty, we begin to engage with the soul—when we must draw closer to the soul—then we no longer impose religious sentiment on the child; rather, we awaken it, and we appeal to the human self. In this, as educators and teachers, we are already practical philosophers of freedom, for we do not say, “You must believe this or that in your spirit”—rather, we awaken what is innate in the human being to believe. We are constantly awakening the child’s soul, not stuffing it full. This is the proper reverence we must have for every creature placed in the world by the Divine, especially for human beings. And so you see the self within the human being begin to sprout, and you see how moral approval and disapproval take on a religious character.

[ 8 ] When we begin to observe how the religious—which was originally natural—seeks to undergo a spiritual metamorphosis, the teacher and educator imbues the word with that which becomes the appealing image of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Then what the child clings to lies within the teacher’s words. Yet the teacher and educator are still at work here. Their actions are no longer imitated; rather, they point to what lies behind them. They no longer stimulate the outward, physical aspect; they stimulate the soul. A religious atmosphere permeates moral approval and disapproval.

[ 9 ] Only after the child has gone through puberty does the intellectual aspect truly begin to stir in its own way. That is why I have already pointed out that it is essential to truly guide a person to the point where they can find within themselves what they are meant to understand—so that they can draw from within what has been given to them, first for natural imitation and then for artistic representation; so that even in later life, we should not subject people to a situation where we force them to experience, whether they want to or not, a sense of being overwhelmed by logic.

[ 10 ] It was indeed a momentous occasion in the development of German intellectual life when, precisely with regard to moral experience, Schiller opposed the Kantian conception of morality. For when Kant had uttered the words: “Duty! You sublime, great name, which encompasses nothing that is pleasing or that carries flattery within it, but demands submission”—Schiller opposed him. He opposed such a concept of duty, which does not allow morality to spring from the original source of good will, but rather from submission to the moral imperative. Schiller, after all, contrasted his memorable words—which contain a genuine moral motive—with Kant’s concept of duty: “I gladly serve my friends,” says Schiller, “yet, alas, I do so out of inclination, and so it often gnaws at me that I am not virtuous.” Only when duty begins to be the innermost human inclination—when it becomes what Goethe expressed with the words: “Duty, where one loves what one commands of oneself,” only then does the whole of morality become that which springs from pure humanity. It was a great moment when, back then, the “distortion” of morality was once again rounded out in a human way by Schiller and Goethe.

[ 11 ] But that which once sprang from German intellectual life has been submerged in the materialistic mindset of the nineteenth century. We still find it that way today. We must once again bring the human being to the fore—out of that which has arisen in civilization through the forgetting of this achievement, which was so great even in the moral realm. First and foremost, this task of bringing the human being back to the fore—now clothed in what is truly human, including the moral—falls to those who are charged with educating and teaching. And it is in this awareness that the impulse for a living form of education and teaching will be able to arise. One might say: It is precisely that sun of German spiritual life, which shines in Schiller and Goethe even in the moral realm, that should shine down in particular upon all that can become a reality through today’s educators and teachers—those who understand the task of their time and who seek, through education and instruction, to develop a human relationship between the individual and themselves, as well as to the true needs of contemporary culture. Speaking of the role of education in the individual’s personal life and in contemporary culture was, after all, the purpose of this education conference. We will only be able to approach this task if we also gratefully consider the impulses that have already been introduced into the development of Central Europe by the great enlightened minds, such as those mentioned. If we wish to take our place in the world, we must develop not only a critical sense but, above all, a sense of gratitude for what those who have gone before us have already accomplished.

[ 12 ] And so one might say: One actually speaks of self-education only when referring to the way in which a person educates themselves; but all education is self-education not only in this subjective sense, but also in the objective sense—namely, the education of the other’s self. And in German, the word “erziehen” (to educate) is related to “ziehen” (to pull). But what one draws up, one leaves untouched in its essence. If one wants to pull a stone out of the water, one does not shatter it. Education does not require that the human being entering the world be shattered or violated in any way, but rather that it be drawn toward experiencing the cultural stage at which humanity stands at the moment this human being has descended from the divine-spiritual worlds into the sensory world. All these intuitively grasped and deeply felt ideas are part of the methodology of teaching. Those who do not incorporate them into their methodology are the least able to understand the role of education in the present.

[ 13 ] And while we foster, through moral development, a delight in what is good and a distaste for what is evil, and while we awaken, through spiritual development, the religious sense that was naturally present in the child from the beginning, a foundation is once again being laid in the depths, in the embryonic stage between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, the predisposition takes shape in the human being who has passed through sexual maturity for the free comprehension of that which one already possesses within oneself. We also prepare the ground for the free apprehension of the world in the religious and moral spheres. It is a great thing when a person can experience how, through their second stage of life, they have come to know pleasure and displeasure, and how their entire emotional life has been permeated by moral good and evil. Then the impulse wells up within them: What you found pleasing as good, that you must do; what you found displeasing, that you must refrain from. - Then the moral principle springs forth from what is now already within the human self; then religious devotion to the world arises in the spirit, after having first existed naturally in the first epoch and psychically in the second. There, the religious feeling and also the religious impulse of the will become what causes a person to act as if God were acting within them. This becomes an expression of the human self; it is not something grafted on from the outside. Everything appears to have arisen from human nature and to have been born after puberty, provided the child has been brought up in an appropriate manner, in a way that corresponds to an understanding of the human being.

[ 14 ] But, as I have already indicated, one must have before one’s eyes the whole human being, as he lives out his earthly journey from birth to death. How easily, in pedagogy, one takes the approach of simply wanting to observe the child. Today, one observes the child externally, in an experimental manner; then one seeks to derive a teaching methodology from what one perceives in the child. This is not possible. For whoever, for example, as a teacher and educator, allows a choleric temperament to run wild and thereby develops irascible behavior, sows the seeds for gout, rheumatism, and the deterioration of the entire organism in later life. And this is true in many other respects as well. We always have the whole human being in their earthly life before us when we are dealing with an event that takes place at a particular stage of life. We must bear this in mind. Anyone who clings to those trivialities that are often presented as “visual instruction” today—where one entrenches oneself behind the phrase that is, on the one hand, self-evident but, on the other, foolish: “A child should be presented only with concrete examples of what it is capable of comprehending”—well, such a person ends up with all those trivialities that make one want to climb the walls. This must be countered by that deeper law of humanity, which brings to our awareness what it means for a person’s vitality when, at the age of forty, they suddenly realize: “Only now do you understand what the revered authority had conceived and exemplified for you. Back then, you accepted it because that authority was the embodiment of truth, goodness, and beauty. Now you have the opportunity to bring what you heard into full consciousness.”

[ 15 ] Such a revival has an immensely rejuvenating and revitalizing effect in later life. And one must do without all of this in later life if, during upbringing and education, care was not taken to ensure that there is truly something in the depths of the soul that can only be understood later on. The world becomes empty and desolate if what imbues external perception with spirit and soul cannot continually well up anew from within human nature. Thus, by educating in this way, we give people—in complete freedom—vitality for their entire lives. And I may mention what I have often said: A true teacher and educator must always have the whole of human life before them; they must, for example, observe that wonderful expression found in many people in old age: One need only come and say very little—whatever stirs them bears a blessing. There is something blessed in every gesture they make; this is characteristic of many people standing on the threshold of death. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that in childhood they naturally learned to look up to others and to surrender themselves. That reverent looking up and surrender in childhood becomes the power to bless in later life. One may say: No one can extend a hand to bless at the end of their earthly life who did not, as a child, naturally learn to fold their hands in prayer. From the folding of the hands in prayer, from that devout surrender in childhood, arises the power to bestow blessings in old age, on the threshold of death. For everything that is hinted at in embryonic form within the child develops into good or evil fruit for the person’s own experience in the course of their earthly life. One must also always bear this in mind when seeking to develop a methodology of teaching based on the conditions of life in education.

[ 16 ] Well, this at least outlines in broad strokes what underlies the effort to apply anthroposophy fruitfully in education and teaching through the Waldorf school. This education conference was intended to shed light, in a certain way, on what has been attempted there—what has, after all, been in practice for years now. It has been examined from various angles; the students’ achievements have also been demonstrated, and there will be much more to show and discuss in this regard.

[ 17 ] At the beginning of today’s session, kind words have now been directed toward me from two different sides. I would like to say: I receive these kind words with heartfelt gratitude, for what use would even the most beautiful inspirations be if there were no people willing to devote themselves fully and make sacrifices to bring these inspirations to life! — Therefore, my gratitude goes to the Waldorf teachers who strive to put into practice the very principles that are to underlie a renewal of education. My thanks also go to those who—I would say—as the youth of tomorrow, as the young people of today, are developing, precisely from their experiences during their own education, a heartfelt understanding of what Waldorf school pedagogy is actually meant to be. We would have every reason to feel happy if, on a fairly large scale, what has been expressed here—the heartfelt sentiment of young people toward Waldorf education—were to become the sturdy chariot that carries our Waldorf education through the culture and civilization of our time. And I also believe that I am speaking from the sentiments of all of you when I gratefully return these words to all those who have spoken such loving and beautiful words; for more than anything else, education and teaching need people who bring these intentions to life. The painter, the sculptor—he may even create his work in complete solitude and say to himself: “If people do not see it, the gods will see it anyway.” The teacher, the educator, performs what constitutes spiritual achievement for earthly existence; he can experience what his work is meant to be only in union with those who help bring it to fruition in the physical, sensory world.

[ 18 ] As teachers and educators, we need to bring this back into our consciousness, especially in our present time. And let me point this out once more at the conclusion of these lectures, for I must bring them to a close because I have other commitments and cannot stay any longer; let me conclude with this: An education grounded in anthroposophy—not one that imposes anthroposophy as a worldview upon people, but one grounded in anthroposophy because anthroposophy provides genuine knowledge of the human being in terms of body, soul, and spirit— it also seeks to engage, in a truly appropriate and realistic way, with the deepest necessities and conditions of our present civilization; this is necessary because humanity in Central Europe can only look forward to a future if it draws its actions and thoughts from such impulses.

[ 19 ] What ails us most of all? In seeking, so to speak, to characterize our pedagogy and didactics at their very core, I have had to point out time and again how we, in timid reverence for what the divine powers have brought into the world as the human self, help this self—as educators—to develop. And this self is not truly grasped unless it is grasped in the spirit; it is, in truth, denied if it is grasped solely through matter. Above all, in the materialistic life of modern times, the “I” has suffered from the misrecognition and misperception of the human self; for as people have turned everywhere to observing matter and acting upon matter, the spirit—and with it, the human self—has been fragmented before them. If one sets limits using the natural methods of scientific inquiry, claiming that one cannot penetrate the world of the spiritual, then one is asserting nothing less than this: one cannot penetrate the world of the human being. To set limits on knowledge means to erase the human being from the process of understanding the world. How can one educate a soul if one first erases it through a materialistic mindset? But this erasure has been the very hallmark of the materialism of the past—a materialism that still prevails in many ways today in all human activity. And so one can already say: What has happened in recent times, within the materialistic mindset that, as I have said, is indeed justified from another perspective—justified because it was inevitable within the development of humanity, but it must also be left behind— one can express it in these words: Human beings have devoted their very selves to matter. But with this, the truly living methodology of teaching and the true conditions of life in education have also been frozen, for only outwardly technical matters can thrive in a civilization that devotes itself—that devotes the self—to matter. Yet matter oppresses the human being. Every human being, to a greater or lesser extent, becomes a closed-off soul because matter confines them within their physicality. One becomes a closed-off soul when one does not find the other human being in the spirit, for in the body one cannot truly find them! Thus, the materialistic mindset of civilization has ushered in an age in which people pass each other by, because all feeling is devoted to physicality. They cry out for social life with their intellect, yet out of their feelings they develop an antisocial coexistence of passing each other by—a failure to understand one another. The souls that are confined within individual bodies pass each other by; the souls that awaken the spirit within themselves, that find the spirit itself, come together as human beings with other human beings. A social life will only emerge from the chaos when people find the spirit and, through it—through the spirit—one human being finds the other in their coexistence.

[ 20 ] And that is also the great longing of today’s youth: to find humanity. The youth movement sprang from a cry for humanity. Now—as was evident a few days ago when the young people here came together—this cry for humanity has transformed into a cry for the Spirit, because we sense that humanity can only be found by finding the Spirit. One must lose sight of the other person if one loses the Spirit.

[ 21 ] Last night I attempted to show how one can find knowledge of the world and, through this knowledge, cultivate a truly living human being on Earth—in body, soul, and spirit—and how a worldview can grow into an experience of the cosmic, and how the sun and moon can be perceived in all that grows and flourishes on Earth. If we educate against such a backdrop, then we will also develop in the right way the experience of the immortal, the divine, and the eternally religious within the growing child. Then we will instill in people during their childhood that which they must carry through the gate of death into the spirit as their immortal part, so that it may continue to flourish. But it is not our task here to discuss this aspect of education in particular. The relationship between education and the human self and cultural life—that is what should be demonstrated first. But one can be certain: If a human being is properly educated on earth, then the heavenly human being will also be properly educated, for the heavenly human being lives within the earthly human being. If we educate the earthly human being in the right way, then through the small portion that must be advanced between birth and death, we also advance the heavenly human being in the right way.

[ 22 ] This, however, takes into account a perspective that rightly seeks knowledge of the world—that knowledge of the world which recognizes that human beings must participate in the construction of the great spiritual world structure, which then also reveals itself in the physical realm. In a proper education, human beings must be recognized as co-creators of humanity. That is what I meant yesterday when I characterized that worldview and outlook on life, which I said should form the backdrop of teaching and education. It follows from this, however, that we cannot grasp the world through the one-sided content of the intellect. It is wrong to say that the world can be grasped through ideas, concepts, and mental images. It is even more mistaken to say that the world should be grasped through feeling. It should be grasped through ideas and feeling, but also through the will! For only when the divine-spiritual descends into the will is the world truly grasped by the human being; and then, too, the human being is grasped—viewed not by a part of the human being, but by the whole human being. We do not need a worldview for the mind and intellect alone; we need a worldview for the whole human being—for the thinking, feeling, and willing human being—a worldview that rediscovers the world within the human being through the whole person: body, soul, and spirit. Only the one who rediscovers the world within the human being in this way—who beholds the world within the human being—only that person can have a true worldview. For just as the visible world is reflected in the eye, so the whole human being is a spiritual, soulful, and physical eye in which the whole world is reflected. This reflection cannot be viewed from the outside; it must be experienced from within. Then, however, it will not remain an illusion like an external reflection; it will become an inner reality. Then, in education, the world becomes human, and the human being discovers the world within himself. If one works in this way in education, one truly senses how humanity becomes fragmented when all human experience is devoted to the material, because souls do not draw closer to one another but lose themselves when they deny their own nature. If one turns to the spirit, then through what can be found in the spirit, one finds the other human being. Social life, in the true sense of the word, must be grounded in the spirit. Human existence must find itself in the spirit; only then will human beings be able to connect with one another, and the world must be seen within the human being if worlds are to be built through human deeds. Therefore, let me state at the conclusion of this reflection what has actually always been in the background of my mind as I spoke to you. The title of what was to be spoken is “A Reflection on Education in Personal Life and in Contemporary Cultural Life.” Now, at the end, allow me to transform the title, to reshape it so that it encompasses what I actually intended to express. Thus, what I actually meant should be condensed into the words:

To devote oneself to the material world,
Means to grind down souls.

To find oneself in the spirit,
Means to connect people.

To see oneself in others,
Means to build worlds.