The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, I am unable to respond to the opening address delivered here this morning, as I was unable to be present for it. Nevertheless, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for the kind words of welcome just spoken by Dr. Zeylmans van Emmichoven and, above all, my deep satisfaction that it has been made possible to deliver a series of lectures on education—a subject so dear to our hearts as the Anthroposophical Society.

[ 2 ] For quite a number of years now, education has been one of the branches of cultural and civilizational activity that we cultivate within the anthroposophical movement, and perhaps—as will become clear from the lectures—we can look back with a certain sense of satisfaction on what has become possible in this field —I cannot say, given the few years our schools have been in existence, that we have been able to accomplish anything, but rather that we have been able to inaugurate and initiate something that has made a certain impression—even far beyond the circles of the anthroposophical movement—on those in today’s cultural world who are interested in spiritual life. Looking back on our educational work, it fills me with true joy to be able to speak now, in a coherent manner, on this very topic—especially here in the Netherlands, where many years ago I had the privilege of lecturing on subjects related to anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

[ 3 ] Anthroposophical pedagogy seeks to work on the basis of an understanding of the human being that can only be attained through the Spiritual Science of anthroposophy; it seeks to work on the basis of an understanding of the human being that encompasses the whole person—body, soul, and spirit. At first glance, one might consider such a statement self-evident. One might say that it goes without saying that the whole human being must be taken into account when it comes to educational activity, to the art of education, and that, on the one hand, the spiritual aspect should not be neglected in favor of the physical, and on the other hand, the physical should not be prioritized over the spiritual, and so on. But one will very soon see how this actually plays out when one observes the practical implementation that arises from any branch of human activity grounded in anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Here in the Netherlands—initially in The Hague—a small school has been founded on the basis of anthroposophical understanding of the human being, a sort of sister school to our Waldorf School in Stuttgart. And I believe that anyone who familiarizes themselves with it—whether through what can be learned from the outside about the operation of such a school, or by having the opportunity in some way to get to know the inner workings of this school, will see that in the practical work—in the practical conduct of teaching and education—something immediately stands out that fundamentally distinguishes those things grounded in anthroposophy from what else might emerge today from our present civilization and culture. This is simply because, wherever we look today, there is a gulf in the impact of cultural life on practical life—a gulf between what people think and conceive theoretically, and what they actually carry out in practice. Theory and practice have become two realms far removed from one another in the life of our civilization today. As paradoxical as it may sound, one can observe this—perhaps most strikingly—in the most practical of life’s activities, such as commercial and economic life. There, one learns all sorts of things in theory: for example, one reflects on economic interrelationships and formulates intentions. But these intentions are unable to directly influence the handling of what one must then do in practice, because on the one hand one thinks about something—let’s say, one merely devises a business plan—while on the other hand one acts, one must act according to the conditions of reality. I would like to express myself even more clearly so that we understand one another.

[ 4 ] Today, for example, one thinks of some business transaction one wants to carry out in order to do business. One thinks through this transaction and organizes it based on one’s intentions; then, naturally, one also does what one intends to do based on theory and abstract thoughts. But when this is then put into practice, it runs up against reality at every turn. One does carry something out, one even carries out one’s thoughts, but these thoughts do not fit into real life. So that one actually brings something into real life that does not fit into that real life. Now, one can carry on such a business—one that has been launched in this way—for a while; the person who launched it will then consider himself a terribly practical person. For anyone who enters a business from the outset having learned, as far as possible, nothing other than what is customary today considers himself a “practical” person. One can indeed hear these kinds of remarks today from practical people directed at a theorist. So he launches this business, brutally implements what he has devised, and may even be able to carry it out for a while if the initial capital is available. Then, after some time, this enterprise goes under, or it is transformed into something else, absorbed by an older company, and so on. People usually fail to consider how much of a good, solid life’s journey has been compromised by doing this, how many livelihoods may have been destroyed in the process, how many people have been harmed, how many have been held back, and so on. This has come about simply because one came up with an idea—an idea conceived as a “practical” person. But in such a case, one is practical not through one’s insights, but through one’s elbow grease. One has introduced something into reality, but without regard for the conditions of reality.

[ 5 ] This is what is secretly proliferating in cultural life today and what most people are unable to see. The only field in which such things are recognized today—where people see that this approach does not work—is the field of mechanical natural science and its application in everyday life. If one wants to build a bridge, one must understand the mechanics that are actually capable of constructing a bridge that meets the requirements placed upon it; otherwise, the first train to cross the bridge will plunge into the water. Such things have indeed already happened, and even in our own time we have seen the consequences of distorted mechanics. But on the whole, this field is the only one where one can say directly in practical life: something is conceived according to the conditions of reality, or it is not.

[ 6 ] If you consider another field, you will immediately see that it is not so obvious whether someone is thinking in accordance with the conditions of reality or not. Take the field of medicine. Even there, the approach today is to formulate a theoretical framework and then attempt to heal based on it. Whether one has truly cured a patient in a specific case, whether a person had to die because of fate, or whether they were perhaps “cured to death”—that is, after all, harder to determine. A bridge collapses if it is built incorrectly; but whether the patient has been made even sicker, whether they have been cured by the treatment, or whether they have died as a result of it—that is not so easy to determine.

[ 7 ] Similarly, in the field of education, it is not always clear whether one is educating based on the conditions of the growing child, or whether one is educating according to preconceived notions—notions that can, after all, be formed by engaging in experimental psychology, externally examining the child and asking: What is the nature of their memory, their capacity for conceptualization, their capacity for judgment, and so on? — One first forms pedagogical views in this way. But how are these put into practice? One has them in one’s head; there they sit. One knows, for example, that a child should be guided in this way in arithmetic, in that way in geography, and so on; now one must proceed to the practical implementation. One reflects and recalls: There is a principle in scientific pedagogy that states one must do it this way or that way. — Now, faced with the practical situation, one recalls this theoretical principle and applies it in a purely mechanical manner. Anyone with a talent for observing such things—as is sometimes the case with educators who excel in their mastery of educational theories but then proceed to apply what they have learned—can observe that such an educator is able to articulate, in an excellent manner, what he once had to know for an exam or what he learned in the practice class; but they remain as alien as possible to real life when facing a child in an educational setting. What we must observe day in and day out, to our heartbreak, is that people pass each other by in life and have no desire to get to know one another. People today do not get to know one another. This is a widespread phenomenon. It is also the root cause of all the social disorders that are currently overwhelming civilized life: the lack of attention and the lack of interest that one person should have for another. In modern civilization, one must accept this as a given; for the time being, it is humanity’s present fate.

[ 8 ] But this sense of alienation and distance between one person and another reaches its peak when a teacher stands alien to a child or a tutor to a pupil and applies educational methods only superficially, completely alien, educational methods derived from external scholarship—and one cannot see, as in the case of a bridge that collapses when the wrong mechanics are applied, that a flawed pedagogy is being employed here. A clear sign that people today can cope only with the mechanical way of thinking—which is celebrating its most brilliant triumphs in the civilized life of the present, which can investigate everywhere whether one has thought correctly or not—is the fact that humanity today has confidence only in mechanical thinking. People now place their trust only in that form of thinking which immediately reveals its absurdity when it attempts to engage with reality in fields other than mechanics. Everything—the structure of the world and living organisms—is to be understood mechanically today, because people now trust only mechanical thinking. And when this mechanical thinking is introduced into education—for example, when a child is made to write down disjointed words that it must quickly recite so that one can then record how much and how quickly a child can grasp—when education proceeds in this manner, it demonstrates that one no longer has the ability to reach the child itself. We experiment on the child because we can no longer reach the child’s heart and soul.

[ 9 ] When one says something like that, it seems as if one has a tendency, a longing, to do nothing but criticize and rebuke. Criticizing is, after all, always easier than building something up. But what I have said truly does not stem from a tendency or a desire to criticize; rather, it stems precisely from the direct observation of life. This direct observation of life must be based on something that is generally entirely excluded from contemporary understanding. What kind of person must one be today if one wants to pursue anything based on knowledge—for example, knowledge of human nature? One must be objective! This is repeated everywhere, in every nook and cranny. Of course, one must be objective. But the question is whether someone can truly be objective while remaining utterly disinterested and inattentive to the essence of a matter.

[ 10 ] Now, people generally have the mental image that love is the most subjective thing in life, and they certainly do not have the mental image that someone who loves could be objective in any way. That is why, today, whenever knowledge is discussed, love is never seriously discussed. It is true that people think a young person who is to acquire knowledge must be reminded to do so with love. This usually happens when the very way in which this knowledge is presented to people is not at all conducive to the development of love. But love itself—the surrender to the world and its phenomena—is certainly not regarded as a form of knowledge. For life, however, love is the primary force of knowledge. And without this love, it is above all impossible to arrive at an understanding of humanity that could serve as the foundation for a true art of education. Let us now consider this love to some extent as it can take effect in this specific field of education, arising precisely from an understanding of humanity grounded in Spiritual Science and anthroposophy.

[ 11 ] The child is entrusted to us for upbringing and education. When we think pedagogically from an anthroposophical perspective, we do not view the child in such a way that we have a mental image of some social or other ideal of humanity, and that we must now develop the child so that it becomes more and more like this ideal. For this ideal of humanity can, after all, be entirely abstract. And such an ideal of humanity is already something today that can present itself in as many forms as there are political, social, and other parties. Depending on whether one swears by liberalism, conservatism, or this or that program, one has a different ideal of humanity. They then wish to gradually guide the child toward becoming what they believe to be right for a human being. This reaches its peak in today’s Russia. But this is essentially how people think today—albeit not in such a radical way—more or less everywhere.

[ 12 ] For anyone who wishes to educate and teach on an anthroposophical foundation, this is by no means a starting point. One does not begin with an idol. For an abstract image of humanity—toward which one seeks to guide any child—is an idol, is something contrived, is not reality. The only reality that might exist in this field would be, at most, if one regarded oneself as an ideal and said: Every child must become just as one is oneself. — Then one would at least have touched upon some kind of reality. But it would immediately become absurd if one were to voice it.

[ 13 ] What we are truly dealing with is the child’s being, which did not begin its existence with its physical existence, but which brought down its spiritual-soul aspect from pre-earthly worlds and immersed itself in the physical body it received from its parents and ancestors. There one looks at this child, as it approaches one in the first days of life with a completely indeterminate physiognomy, with completely disorganized, disoriented movements. There one observes, day by day, week by week, how the physiognomy becomes more and more distinct as an expression of what is working its way to the surface from the inner soul. One observes how the child’s movements—and indeed its entire life—become increasingly oriented, as a spiritual-soul element deep within works its way to the surface. One asks oneself with sacred awe and reverence: What is it, then, that is working its way to the surface? - Then one’s heart and mind are drawn back to what was there in the child’s own spiritual-soul life in the spiritual-soul, pre-earthly world—what descended from that world into the physical one—and one says to oneself: “You, child, now that you have entered earthly existence through birth, you are among human beings; before, you were among spiritual-divine beings.” — What once lived among spiritual-divine beings has descended to be among human beings! One sees the divine taking shape within the child. One feels as if standing before an altar. Except that on the altars we are accustomed to seeing in religious communities, people offer sacrifices to the gods so that their offerings may ascend into the spiritual world; now, in a sense, one feels as if standing before the reverse altar: the gods send down their streams of grace as divine-spiritual beings so that these may unfold humanly here on the altar of physical life as the gods’ emissaries! In every child, one beholds the unfolding of the divine-spiritual world order: how God creates in the world. It seems most sublime, most significant, when one beholds it in the developing child. But then every single human child becomes a sacred mystery. For then every single child poses the great question—not: How should one raise it so that it approaches an idol, as one has conceived it—but: How should one nurture what the gods have sent down to the earthly world? — One learns to recognize oneself as a helper of the divine-spiritual world, and above all, one learns to ask the question: What can come of approaching instruction and upbringing with such a mindset?

[ 14 ] True pedagogy is based, above all, on this attitude. It is this attitude—the commitment to nurturing pedagogy and instruction—that matters most! An understanding of human nature can only be acquired when love for humanity—in this case, love for the child—becomes an active way of life. When such an attitude arises, the profession of the educator becomes a priestly vocation; for then the educator becomes the steward of what the gods wish to accomplish through human beings.

[ 15 ] Once again, it might seem as if something self-evident is being stated, just in slightly different words. But that is not the case. After all, we are seeing more and more in today’s antisocial world order—which merely masquerades as social—that something else is emerging: using education to chase after an idol of humanity, rather than recognizing oneself as the guardian of that which one must first come to know when confronted with it in a child.

[ 16 ] A mindset such as the one I have described cannot operate in the abstract; it must operate intellectually—but it must be directed toward practical matters. Nor does one acquire such a mindset by assimilating theories that are alien to life and distant from it; rather, one acquires it only when one has a sense for every expression of life, when one is able to respond to every expression of life with love.

[ 17 ] There is a lot of talk these days about progressive education. We even saw after the war that people were speaking of “revolutionary education.” All sorts of new approaches to education are being devised, and in fact everyone is involved in reforming education in one way or another; either they contribute one thing or another to this or that institution that is to be founded, or they at least participate verbally by saying: “This is how I imagine education should be structured,” and so on. — There is much talk about the way in which education should be carried out. But do you know what impression it makes when one takes an unbiased look at what the various educational reform associations—including, for my part, the radical ones—are saying today, and at the programs they’re developing? I don’t know if many people have really considered the impression one gets when one has so many programs from educational reform associations and societies laid out before one; one gets the impression: Good heavens, how clever people are today! For everything that comes about in this way is, in fact, incredibly clever. I don’t mean that ironically at all, but quite seriously. We have never had an age that was as clever as our own.

[ 18 ] It sets forth: Paragraph 1. How should children be educated if their natural abilities are to be developed? Paragraph 2... Paragraph 3... and so on. Today, people from any profession or social class can come together and draw up such programs: the results—which take the form of paragraphs 1 through 30—will be delightfully clever. After all, we know how to formulate everything theoretically these days. We have never been as skilled at formulating things as we are today. And then one can present such a program—or a number of programs—to a commission or a parliament. That, too, is very clever. Perhaps, for partisan reasons, this or that will be struck out or added, and something terribly clever—albeit sometimes quite partisan in nature—will emerge. But that’s not the place to start, because none of that really matters.

[ 19 ] Waldorf education has never been based on such a program, because—I don’t mean to boast, but we could certainly have been just as clever as some educational reform associations if the goal had been to develop a program—the fact that we have to take reality into account might have hindered us, and the result would have been something even more foolish. But for us, it was never about a program. Principles of how to educate, or foundational ideas that might somehow find their way into legislation, did not interest us from the very beginning. What interested us was reality—the very true reality. What was that? It was, first and foremost, the children—a number of individual children, each with this or that essential quality. One must have come to know this in order to understand what lies within these children—through what has descended into them and what they express through their physicality. So children were the first. And then teachers. You can advocate the principle as beautifully as you like—that the child must be educated according to his or her individuality—which, after all, is included in all reform programs today—but nothing will ever come of it that way; rather, alongside the children there is a certain number of teachers, and one must know what these teachers are capable of achieving in relation to these children. One must organize the school in such a way that one does not set forth an abstract ideal, but rather shapes the school out of the teaching staff and the student body—and these do not exist in an abstract sense, but as very concrete, individual beings. That, then, is what this is all about. And this inevitably leads one to the necessity of building true pedagogy—pedagogy grounded in reality—on an understanding of human nature; of being practical in every detail, rather than theoretical.

[ 20 ] Waldorf education—which, after all, was the first to introduce anthroposophical pedagogy—is therefore an artistic educational practice, and it can, in essence, only offer guidance on how to proceed in this or that specific case. There is little interest in general theories, but all the more in the impulses that can arise from anthroposophy for a genuine understanding of human nature—an understanding that must begin with the child. But our crude observations today blur precisely the distinctive characteristics of the successive stages of life. One really must be somewhat—I would say—inspired by what Spiritual Science can tell us today about the historical development of humanity if one wishes to develop the proper attitude toward the child. After all, we know so extraordinarily little today about the human being and humanity. People have a mental image of how they imagine we will be today, as we live our lives, just as people have lived since the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, and that this has actually always been the case. People also have a mental image of the ancient Greeks or the ancient Egyptians as being much like people today. And if one goes back even further, history becomes blurred until those beings appear who are half-ape, half-human, just as modern natural science conceives them. But there is no interest in addressing the great differences that exist between the historical and prehistoric periods of humanity.

[ 21 ] Let us consider the human being as he stands before us today: the child, at least until the teeth begin to fall out. We see quite clearly that physical development runs parallel to spiritual-soul development. Everything that emerges spiritually and soulfully has its exact counterpart in the physical; both express themselves together and emerge together from the child. Then, once the child has gone through the teething period, we see how the soul is already becoming more emancipated from the physical. On the one hand, we will be able to observe a spiritual-soul development in the child; on the other hand, a physical one. However, these two aspects are not yet strongly separated. But as we proceed further in the child’s development—from puberty to around the age of 21—this separation becomes even more pronounced. And when we reach the period when a person is 27 or 28 years old, it is no longer possible today, among the present-day human race, to perceive the way in which spiritual and soul development is connected to physical and bodily development. What a person does during this time can be observed, on the one hand, in the spiritual-soul realm and, on the other hand, in the physical-bodily realm; but no connection is made between the two. By the end of their twenties, a person has completely emancipated themselves in the spiritual-soul realm from the physical-bodily realm. And so it continues until the end of life.

[ 22 ] But it wasn't always that way. That's just what people believe. Spiritual Science, guided by anthroposophy, shows us clearly and unambiguously: What we see today, at our present stage of human development—that the child is, in its spiritual and soul aspects, entirely dependent on the physical body, and in turn, in its physical body, on the spiritual and soul aspects—this continued in ancient times all the way up to the highest age—we simply do not notice it. If one goes back very far, to those times from which the notion that there were patriarchs originates, and asks oneself, “What was such a person—a patriarch—like?”, one must conclude: Such a person, who had grown old, had undergone physical changes, but even into the very highest age, he felt as only a very young person can feel today; even in old age, he felt his spiritual and soul life to be dependent on his physical body. — Today, we no longer feel that our physical body is dependent on what we think or feel. But such a dependence was once felt in earlier cultural epochs; and one also felt, once one had passed a certain age, how the bones became harder, how the muscles contained deposits of substances not belonging to them, as one became sclerotic. People felt the decline of life. And they also felt that as the physical aspect recedes, the spiritual aspect rises—precisely because of the physical’s retreat. The soul becomes free from physicality, they told themselves, as the body begins to decay. And the soul is completely free in old age, when the body is, so to speak, already in a state of complete decay; that is when the soul-spiritual most completely breaks free from the physical; it no longer resides within it. That is why people looked up to the patriarchs with such devotion and reverence and asked themselves: Oh, what will it be like for me when I am that old one day? Then one will be able to know something, to recognize something, to see through something that I cannot yet recognize or see through now, because I am still in the process of building up the physical. —- Back then, people could still glimpse a physical-mental, physical-spiritual world order. That was the earliest era. Then came a time when this interdependence between the physical and the mental-spiritual was felt only up to about the age of 50; in an even later era, only up to the age of 40. And then came the Greek era. What is particularly valuable about the Greek era is that the Greeks could still just barely sense the harmony between the mental-emotional and the physical-bodily. The Greeks still felt this harmony up to the ages of 30 or 40. At that age, they could still sense in their bloodstream what unites the soul with the physical body. This was the foundation of the unity of Greek art and culture—which transformed all that was theoretical into art and all that was artistic into wisdom. The sculptor worked in such a way that he did not need a model; rather, he could still sense within his own being how the arm or leg is permeated by the forces that shape it. This had been learned, for example, at the festivals; but today, when they are imitated, they make not the slightest sense.

[ 23 ] But if one has such an understanding of human evolution, one knows what has actually taken place in the course of human development, and one also knows that today, strictly speaking, the parallelism between the physical-bodily and the spiritual-soul aspects lasts only until about the age of 27 or 28; most people only perceive this parallelism up to the onset of puberty. And so one then understands how the divine-spiritual aspect springs forth in the developing human being. And then one gains the necessary reverence for developing what one encounters in the child—that is, for developing what is given to us at that moment, rather than those abstract ideals that one has devised for oneself.

[ 24 ] This leads us to an understanding of human nature that, in its particularity, is individual and spiritual. And once we have imbued ourselves with such general, broad historical perspectives, we then approach the individual tasks of education in a corresponding manner. Then a completely different kind of life emerges when the educator enters the classroom; for then he brings the world—the spiritual, soul, and physical world—into the classroom. Then he is surrounded by the atmosphere of a worldview grounded in reality, not one devised theoretically. Then he is surrounded by a sense of the world. And then we will be able to experience something remarkable—if we consider what has just been hinted at—namely, that we are establishing a pedagogy that will gradually come to represent the very opposite of what educational practice is today in many particularly characteristic areas. All sorts of naturally gifted humorists often choose the so-called schoolteacher as a target that serves them well, on whom they can vent their humor. Well, if a schoolteacher is endowed with the necessary sense of humor, he can also take aim at those who present a caricatured image of him to the world. But what really matters is something entirely different. For if the teacher—as today’s theoretical pedagogy does—is placed in the school in such a way that he cannot get to know the child at all, yet must still be occupied with the child—how can he become anything other than out of touch with the real world! In today’s school system, one can’t help but become out of touch with the world; one is, after all, completely torn away from it. And then the strange thing happens: these out-of-touch educators are supposed to develop people so they can thrive in the world.

[ 25 ] But let us now imagine that the things we have spoken of today become a way of thinking. Then the teacher relates to the children in such a way that, in each individual child, a whole world is revealed to him—not merely a human world, but a divine-spiritual world within the earthly realm. And one might say: The world reveals itself to the educator in as many different ways as there are children entrusted to his care. - Through each child, he looks into the great world. His teaching becomes an art. His teaching is sustained by the awareness that what is done here has a direct impact on the development of the world. This pedagogy, as understood here, also elevates the teacher—in the process of educating and developing the human being—to the level of a great worldview. Then the teacher becomes the one who can also take a leading role in the great questions of civilization. And then the student never outgrows the teacher, as is so often the case today. - For we can also have the following situation in school. Let us suppose, for a moment, that the teacher were truly to educate according to an ideal, according to a vision of humanity that he can set before himself. Let’s imagine he has a class of 30 children; among them, as fate would have it, there are two who, by their very nature, are far more gifted than the teacher himself. What would he have to do in this case? He would have to strive to make them embody his educational ideal; nothing else could ever come of it. But is that even possible? Reality does not allow it; the students then outgrow the teacher.

[ 26 ] If, on the other hand, we educate in a way that is true to reality—if we are guardians of what reveals itself in the child’s spirit and soul—then we are, in fact, in the same position as the gardener is with regard to his plants. Do you believe that the gardener knows all the secrets of the plants he tends? Oh, they contain far more such secrets than the gardener knows; but he can care for the plants—and perhaps he is best able to care for precisely those he does not yet know. For he knows the practice; he has it, so to speak, under “spiritual control.” Thus it also becomes possible for a reality-based art of education that, even if one is not a genius oneself, as an educator one may be faced with geniuses. For one knows that one is not to lead toward an abstract ideal, but rather that within the child the God in man is at work, working through the physical body. If one has this attitude, then one will also bring this about. The love that spreads out and pours over the educational process brings it about. But this attitude must be present.

[ 27 ] My intention today, as a way of greeting my esteemed audience, was simply to give a brief indication of what these lectures will cover; they will address the educational value of understanding human nature and the cultural value of education.