The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] At this point in my pedagogical reflections, I would like to add a few remarks about the arrangements made at the Waldorf School to put into practice the pedagogical principles I have already mentioned here and which I will discuss further in these lectures.

[ 2 ] The Waldorf School in Stuttgart is, in fact, the school that was established in 1919 at the suggestion of Emil Molt in accordance with the principles of anthroposophical pedagogy. This alignment with anthroposophical pedagogy was ensured by the fact that I was entrusted with the establishment and leadership of this school. Therefore, when I describe how this school is organized, it will also serve as an example of the practical implementation of the pedagogical principles discussed here.

[ 3 ] First of all, I would like to point out that the very essence of all teaching and education at the Waldorf School is, first and foremost, the teachers’ conference—those meetings held regularly by the teaching staff, which I attend whenever I am able to be in Stuttgart myself. These teachers’ conferences do not merely deal with external school matters—such as drafting the curriculum, organizing the classes, and so on—but rather they engage in a thorough examination of the entire life of the school and everything that is meant to animate that life. Now, the school is organized to provide instruction and education based on an understanding of human nature—which means, specifically, an understanding of the individuality of each child. Therefore, observation—psychological observation of the children’s individualities—constitutes an essential element in the overall design of instruction in its specific, concrete details. In teachers’ conferences, discussions about individual children are conducted in such a way that an attempt is made to grasp the essence of human nature precisely within that particular individuality present in each child. You can imagine that one is confronted there with all degrees and types of children’s abilities and spiritual powers. One has before one everything that exists in a child, ranging from—one might say—psychological and physiological inferiority all the way up to—hopefully confirmed by life itself—genius.

[ 4 ] If one wishes to observe children according to their true nature, the most important thing is to develop a psychological perspective for observing children. This psychological perspective involves not only a general observation of the child’s individual abilities, but above all an evaluation of those abilities. For you need only consider the following: You may have a child before you who appears exceptionally gifted when it comes to learning to read or write, who appears very gifted, for example, in learning arithmetic or languages. But to stop there and say to yourself, “This child is gifted because he or she learns languages easily, learns arithmetic easily, and so on”—that is psychological superficiality. At a young age—say, 7, 8, or 9 years old—the ease with which a child learns may mean that the child will one day become a genius; but it may just as well mean that the child will one day become a person suffering from a nervous disorder or some other illness. If one understands that the human being, in addition to the physical body visible to the eye, also possesses an etheric body—which underlies the forces of growth and nutrition and enables the child to grow taller— if one further considers that the human being also possesses an astral body, whose laws have absolutely nothing to do with what is physically constructive on Earth, but which in fact continually breaks down the physical, destroying it so that the spiritual may have room; and when one further considers that the “I” organization is also connected to the human being, so that one must regard the three higher organizations—the etheric body, the astral body, the “I” organization—must be taken into account just as much as the visible physical body, then one will also be able to form a mental image of just how complex such a human being actually is, and how each of these components of the human being can bring about the presence of talent or a lack thereof in any given area, or the manifestation of a deceptive talent, a temporary, pathological talent. To do this, one must develop the ability to discern whether a talent is one that tends toward health or one that tends toward pathology.

[ 5 ] If one embodies the understanding of human nature discussed in these lectures—with the necessary love, devotion, and willingness to make sacrifices as a teacher and educator—then something remarkable happens: in living together with the children—please do not misunderstand this phrase; it is not meant to be a mere label—one becomes wiser and wiser. One discovers, so to speak, for oneself how to assess any ability or action of a child. One simply learns to immerse oneself completely in the child’s nature—and to do so relatively quickly.

[ 6 ] I know that some will say: If you claim that, in addition to their visible body, human beings also possess the supersensible members—the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I”-organization—then surely only a clairvoyant person, who can perceive these supersensible members of human nature, could be a teacher. But that is not the case. Everything that can be perceived in a human being through imagination, inspiration, and intuition—as I have described in my books—can also be assessed on the basis of the physical constitution, because it is expressed throughout the child’s physical constitution. Therefore, it is entirely possible that a teacher or educator who simply carries out their profession in a loving manner, based on a comprehensive understanding of human nature, can speak of this—for example, saying in a specific case: “Here we have a child who is completely healthy with regard to their ego, their astral body, and also their etheric body; but the physical body exhibits hardening and stiffening, so that the child cannot develop the abilities for which it is spiritually predisposed, because the physical body is an obstacle.” — Or consider another case: it is possible that someone might then say, “This child is exhibiting precocious traits at an early age, at 7 or 8 years old; the child surprises us by learning one thing or another early on, but note that the physical body is too soft; it carries within itself the predisposition to eventually flow out into skill. — For when the physical body is too soft—when, so to speak, the fluid element predominates over the solid— then the spiritual-soul aspect pushes forward with its own nature, and one has a precocious child who, as the physical body continues to develop, holds back this precocity and who, under certain circumstances, can change everything again and become not just an average person, but even a mediocre or even inferior person in life. In short, the point is that what one observes externally in a child must first be evaluated internally; thus, nothing is really said when one speaks merely of abilities or lack thereof.

[ 7 ] What I am telling you now is something you can also learn from the biographies of a wide variety of people. In the spiritual development of humanity, one could cite a whole gallery of enlightened individuals who achieved great things later in life but who, as children, were considered almost entirely untalented—children who, as they say, were left to sit in class. One comes across the most remarkable examples of this in the world. There is, for example, a poet who, right up until his 18th, 19th, and even his 20th year, was considered so untalented by all the teachers and educators who dealt with him that they advised him against pursuing higher studies precisely because he was so untalented. But he didn’t let that deter him; he pursued those higher studies anyway and was later very quickly appointed inspector of the very schools that had refused to admit him as a young man. — There is an Austrian poet, Robert Hamerling, who was preparing to become a high school teacher. He received excellent grades in Greek and Latin on his exams; however, he was not certified to teach German because his essays were deemed very poor. Yet he went on to become a famous poet.

[ 8 ] I could go on like this, and it would become clear at every turn that it is indeed difficult to perceive in a growing child what is truly within that young person. Nevertheless, this must be done in a school that aims to educate and teach properly. That is why, particularly in Waldorf schools, the greatest emphasis is placed on observing the children during faculty meetings, so that the entire teaching staff is always informed about how each child is doing. Of course, this task is becoming increasingly extensive. For the Waldorf School, which was founded a few years ago with about 150 children, now has—including all the parallel classes that had to be established—about 800 students in over 20 classes with well over 40 teachers. All of this testifies to the fact that the possibility of proceeding as I have described exists only if one simultaneously develops the insight to recognize which child requires special attention. For some children are of such a nature that, once they are understood, this understanding sheds light on many other children. With some children, understanding alone is almost insufficient, but all of this can be overcome by loving devotion to what is taking place here as an understanding of human nature.

[ 9 ] We need to separate a number of children—either more or less permanently or temporarily—from the others because they are mentally disabled and, due to their inability to grasp or comprehend, would disrupt the others. These children are then placed in a class for mentally disabled children. This class is led by the man who has spoken to you here, Dr. Schubert, who, due to his very special nature, is perfectly suited to leading such a class. For leading such a class requires, in fact, very special abilities. It truly requires the ability to respond to what I would call the soul qualities that are stuck within the physical body and do not want to emerge. One must first draw them out little by little. This, in turn, borders on physical illness; it borders on the point where psychological abnormality meets physical illness. This boundary is entirely fluid; it is by no means a fixed entity. Indeed, one would do well to look beyond every so-called psychological abnormality to what is unhealthy somewhere within the human physique. For in the true sense of the word, there are no mental illnesses; these are actually always caused by the fact that the physical body does not allow the spiritual to emerge, does not absorb it somewhere within itself, and does not process it for the physical world. In Germany today, there is still the peculiarity in schools that almost all children are not only undernourished but are already suffering from the long-term consequences of years of malnutrition.

[ 10 ] The point is that one must truly be able to carry through, in one’s entire approach, a unified perspective in the observation of the soul-spiritual and the physical-bodily. People find it very difficult to understand that this is a necessity in education and teaching. Once, a man who was otherwise quite intelligent—and who is deeply involved in the school system—visited the Waldorf School. I personally showed him around for days on end. He was very interested in everything. But after everything I had told him about one child or another—for we usually talk about the children, not about abstract teaching principles; our education is based, after all, on an understanding of human nature—he finally said: “Well, then all teachers would actually have to be doctors.” I replied: “They don’t need to be; but they do need to know something—from the child’s physical constitution, whether sick or healthy—to the extent necessary for the teacher to educate the child.” For where does one end up if one says that something is fundamentally impossible, or that the teacher cannot learn this or that because one cannot arrange for this or that? One must simply arrange for the appropriate conditions, and the teacher must learn it. That is the only possible standpoint. — The so-called normal abilities that a person develops—which are present in every human being—are best studied through pathological manifestations. And if one comes to know an organism that is ill in certain respects, then—if one truly comes to know it—one has thereby laid the foundation for coming to know a genius soul. Not that I would take any position akin to Lambroso’s or similar views; that is not the case. I am not claiming that genius is always a sign of illness; but one comes to know the spiritual-soul aspect precisely by studying the sick body of a child. Through the difficulties the spiritual-soul aspect encounters in expressing itself within a sick body, one learns to recognize the manner in which the soul—when it expresses itself particularly strongly at such times—takes hold of the organism.

[ 11 ] Thus, pedagogy not only borders on the mild pathology found in children with developmental delays, but it also borders on the pathological in the broadest sense. That is why we have also introduced medical treatment for the children at our school. But we do not have a doctor who, outside of pedagogy, is involved solely in medicine; rather, our school doctor, Dr. Kolisko, is also a teacher in one of the classes. He is fully immersed in the school’s entire educational system; he knows all the children and therefore understands, in a completely different way, the source of any pathological issue in a child he knows, as opposed to a situation where the school doctor comes to the school only once in a blue moon and assesses a child’s health with just a few glances. Furthermore, teachers’ conferences are organized in such a way that no distinction is drawn between the mental-spiritual and the physical-bodily aspects when considering the child. Naturally, this means that the teacher must gradually develop an eye for the whole person, so that the details of physical health or illness interest him just as much as what is mentally healthy or abnormal.

[ 12 ] That is what we strive for in school: that every teacher take the deepest interest in and pay the greatest attention to the whole person. This also means that our teachers are not, strictly speaking, specialists. After all, it doesn’t really matter whether a teacher has a better or worse command of history, as long as he or she is, in general, a person who can influence the children in the sense described, and as long as he or she has an eye for how the child develops under his or her guidance. Since I had to teach—and always give private lessons—from the age of 14 or 15 just to make a living, I had to acquire this approach to education through direct teaching and educational practice. For example, when I was a very young man of 21, a family entrusted me with the education of four boys. Among them was one—he was 11 years old at the time I joined the family as a tutor—who suffered from hydrocephalus to the highest degree. He had some very peculiar traits. He didn’t like to eat at the table with the family, but would walk away from the table into the kitchen, where the containers were kept in which people threw away food scraps; there he would eat the potato peels, along with the dirt that had fallen into those containers. At age 11, he really didn’t know anything in particular yet. They had tried to see if, based on the earlier instruction he had received, he could take the entrance exam for any elementary school class. But when he turned in the results of his exam, there was only a notebook with a large hole in it where he had erased something. He had accomplished nothing else on that exam, and he was already 11 years old. His parents were unhappy. They belonged to the more affluent middle class, and everyone said, “The boy is abnormal”—and of course, everyone forms a prejudice against a child when such things are said. They said, “He must learn a trade; he’ll never amount to anything else.” — I joined the family, but no one really understood when I stated my intention: “If you entrust the boy to me now, with full responsibility, then I promise nothing—only that I will bring out everything that is within him.” No one understood that—except the mother, with a look that spoke volumes, and the excellent family doctor. It was that same doctor who later, together with Dr. Freud, founded psychoanalysis—but back when it was still in its better phase; later, he broke away from it when it fell into decadence. But one could talk to him, and that led to the boy being raised and educated by me.

[ 13 ] In 1½ years, his head had become significantly smaller, and the boy was now ready to be enrolled in high school. I continued to support him throughout his school years; he needed tutoring, but he was still able to be admitted to high school after 1½ years. However, his education had to be conducted in such a way that I sometimes needed 1½ hours to prepare what I intended to teach the boy in a quarter of an hour. For the point was precisely to approach this boy’s instruction with the greatest economy, never taking more time for anything than was necessary. It was also a matter of organizing the daily schedule with the utmost precision. I laid out the rules: the boy must spend this much time playing music, this much time doing gymnastics, this much time going for walks, and so on. But then, I told myself, we can carry out with the boy whatever brings out the potential that lies within him. — Now there were times when I actually had a very hard time with this approach to his education. The boy turned pale. Everyone—with the exception of his mother and the family doctor—said, “He’s ruining our boy!” — I replied, “Of course I can’t continue with his education if people keep interfering; things must be allowed to proceed as agreed.” — And they did proceed. The boy went through high school, completed his studies, became a doctor, and he died young only because, during the World War, as a doctor who had been drafted, he was infected with a disease from which he ultimately died. But he knew how to practice his medical profession quite well. — I cite this merely as an example of how necessary it is, in education, to pay attention to everything—that is, for example, to have an eye for how, under a certain treatment, hydrocephalus ultimately recedes from week to week.

[ 14 ] Now you might say: Certainly, something like this can happen in one-on-one instruction.—But it can just as easily happen in relatively large classes. For whoever lovingly immerses themselves in this way in what is being discussed here as an understanding of human nature will quickly acquire the ability, even in a class with many students, to give each individual the attention they need. But what is necessary is precisely this psychological insight, of the kind I have described. Yet one does not acquire this psychological insight so easily if one goes through life as an individual with no interest whatsoever in other people. I can certainly say that I know what I owe to the fact that I have never actually found a single person uninteresting. Even as a child, I never found a single person uninteresting. And I know I could not have raised that boy if I hadn’t actually found all people interesting.

[ 15 ] This breadth of interest is what pervades the Waldorf School’s faculty meetings like an atmosphere, so that—if I may put it this way—a psychological mood certainly prevails there. But then these faculty meetings truly become a school of higher psychology. It is interesting to see how, year after year, the teaching staff as a whole can deepen its understanding of the psychological perspective. For in addition to everything I have described, the following comes into play when one looks at the individual classes. We do not keep statistics in the usual sense, but for us the classes are living entities, not just the individual students. One can study such a class on its own, and it is extraordinarily interesting to observe what intangible forces come to light within it. But when one studies an entire class, and when the teachers of the various classes discuss the distinctive characteristics of their classes during faculty meetings, it is interesting to note, for example, that a class—we have coeducational classes—is a completely different entity when there are more girls than boys than when there are more boys than girls; and yet another entirely different entity is a class in which there are equal numbers of boys and girls. This becomes extraordinarily interesting, not because of the words exchanged between them or the little flirtations that always occur in the upper grades. For this, one also acquires the necessary insight—one that sees when necessary and does not see when it is not. But quite apart from that, it is actually the fact—the inner, imponderable essence of the various male and female individualities—that gives the class a very specific spiritual structure. And so one comes to know the class’s individuality. If, as is the case at our Waldorf School, there are parallel classes, then, if necessary—though it is very rarely necessary—one can adjust the distribution within the classes somewhat.

[ 16 ] Such studies—that is, the classes themselves—in turn form the content of the teachers’ conferences. And so the content of the conferences is not merely the organization of the school, but a living continuation of pedagogy within the school itself, so that the teachers are constantly learning. In this way, the conferences become the soul of the entire school. And then one also learns to appreciate the small things in the right way, to assess the important things correctly, and so on. Then, when a minor misbehavior occurs on the part of a child, one does not immediately cry wolf; but one will also have an eye for when something happens that may be significant for the school’s overall development. Thus, as an overall phenomenon, something very interesting emerges in our Waldorf school in particular—something that has actually only become apparent over the years: On the whole, our children are further along in grasping what a child is supposed to acquire in school—even in the higher grades—than students at other schools; in the lower grades, as I have described, they lag somewhat behind in reading and writing, because these skills are spread out over more years and taught using a completely different method. But between the ages of 13 and 15, they begin to pull ahead of students at other schools in terms of a certain ease in delving into a subject, as well as in their ability to grasp things skillfully, and so on.

[ 17 ] Now a major difficulty arises. It is curious that whenever there is light, objects cast shadows; in dim light the shadows are faint, and in bright light they are strong. And so, with regard to certain psychological qualities, the following becomes apparent: If care is not taken to ensure that teachers maintain contact with their students in every way—so that the teachers truly serve as role models and the children truly follow those models—then moral deviations can very easily arise as the counter-images of a lack of contact. One must not harbor any illusions about this. That is simply the way it is. That is why it is so crucial that a true, complete fusion of the teachers’ individualities and the students’ individualities develop, so that through this strong inner connection between the children and the teachers, the children’s further development on the one hand fully corresponds to the teachers’ further development on the other.

[ 18 ] These things should all be studied with genuine human warmth and compassion; otherwise, one will be in for some surprises. But the method is certainly well-suited to bringing out everything that lies within a person. At some point, this or that trait may well prove worthy of attention: There is a German poet who knew that he had been very poorly educated and brought up, so that many of his qualities—as he always lamented—could not emerge once his body had already become stiff and rigid, precisely because no care had been taken in his youth to ensure that his individuality could develop. Then one day he went to see a phrenologist. — Now, please don’t think that I want to defend phrenology in any way or hold it in particularly high regard; but it does have its significance when practiced intuitively. — The phrenologist examined him, told him all sorts of nice things, for there were indeed some positive qualities present; but at one point on the skull he suddenly paused, turned red, and didn’t dare say anything. Then the poet said: “Well, go ahead and speak—that’s the thief’s instinct; it’s inside me.” And it’s likely that if I’d been better educated in school, that thief’s instinct would have caused the greatest difficulties.

[ 19 ] If you want to educate someone, you also need a certain amount of leeway. But you don’t have that when the dreadful school schedule operates in the usual way: religion from 8 to 9, physical education from 9 to 10, history from 10 to 11, and arithmetic from 11 to 12. Then everything that comes later erases what came before; there’s nothing you can do—as a teacher, you despair when you’re expected to make it all work. That is why we have what can be called “block teaching” in the Waldorf school. The child enters a class. In the main lesson, the child receives a unified lesson every day during the main morning hours—from 8 to 10 or from 8 to 11—with appropriate short breaks. There is one teacher in the classroom, even in the upper grades. The subject of instruction does not change from period to period; rather, for whatever topic one wishes to cover—for example, arithmetic—one needs, say, four weeks. Then, every day from 8 to 10 a.m., the relevant chapter is covered, and each day builds upon what was covered the previous day. What comes later does not erase what came before; concentration is possible. Once four weeks have passed and a chapter on arithmetic has been sufficiently covered and completed, the students begin a chapter on history, which is then covered over the course of four to five weeks, depending on what is needed, and so on. This approach is the exact opposite of what is known as the subject-teacher system. For example, if you visit the Waldorf School, you might find our Dr. Baravalle in a classroom where he is currently teaching descriptive geometry. The students sit in front of him at their desks, where they have laid out their drawing boards; he has them draw, and he behaves like the most exemplary specialist teacher in geometry. - If you go to another school, you might look up the list of professors or teachers and find, for example, a note next to one’s name: “Exams in geometry, mathematics, or the like.” I have known many teachers who prided themselves on the fact that, even though they were math teachers, they couldn’t even tell the children the names of the plants during a school field trip. — But the morning isn’t even over yet, and there you find the same Dr. Baravalle, pacing back and forth between the desks in his classroom, teaching English. And from the way he applies his teaching methods here in his lectures, you can see that he’s talked about all sorts of things, and you couldn’t figure out which subject he actually teaches. Some of you may have thought he taught geography, or perhaps geometry, or something similar. The essence, the substance, and the content of learning can indeed be acquired so quickly if one has even the slightest aptitude for gaining insight—for experiencing something cognitively within the soul. That is why we do not follow a traditional timetable but rather teach in epochs. Of course, this is not done in a pedantic way. In our Waldorf school, the main lessons are organized by thematic blocks; naturally, some subjects must also be taught according to a regular schedule, in which case they follow the main lessons.

[ 20 ] We also take great care to ensure that, as soon as they enter elementary school, the children are taught in two foreign languages—in our case, French and English. We start this from a very young age. However, we face a terrible dilemma at our school because so many students have been flocking to the Waldorf School since its founding. For example, students come to us who could be admitted to the 6th grade. But there are already children in that class who have made some progress in the languages. Now the new students are joining, and we have to place them in the 5th grade because they don’t have the slightest clue about the languages yet. We have to constantly expect these kinds of difficulties.

[ 21 ] In doing so, we ensure that the most essential lessons can be scheduled for the morning, leaving the afternoon for physical activities—gymnastics, eurythmy, and so on—all without pedantry. After all, since one cannot pay teachers indefinitely, not everything can be organized according to the ideal, but only as far as is possible. You will not misunderstand me when I say that ideals are of no practical use. Do not say that anthroposophy is not idealistic. We can certainly appreciate ideals, but ideals are of no practical use; one can paint a beautiful picture of them, one can say: “This is how it should be!”—One can also imagine that one is striving toward it. But in reality, one has a very specific, concrete group of 800 students whom one must know, and about 40 to 50 teachers whom one must also know. For what good is a teaching staff if no one lives up to the ideal! The essential thing is to work with what can actually be achieved—that is, with what is available. Then you’re operating within reality. And if you want to put something into practice, it’s a matter of operating within reality. — This applies to the organization of block teaching.

[ 22 ] When it comes to the freedom in conducting lessons—which must naturally follow from everything I have described to you—the point, of course, is that our children should not always sit there quietly like little mice. But you should just see how the entire moral and emotional constitution of a class is the result of the person standing there in front of them—which in turn depends on the imponderables. In this regard, one can indeed experience—I mean to say that there are also teachers at the Waldorf School who are not up to the task; I don’t want to describe them—a disruption can happen from time to time—but you can certainly witness it when you walk into a classroom: a quarter of the class is lying under the desks, a quarter is up on top, and the rest are constantly running out the door and knocking around outside. These are things that shouldn’t take you by surprise. They’ll turn out differently, after all, if you know how to handle the children. - One should certainly allow the children to express whatever is dynamic within them and should deal with them not in a punitive way, but in a different way. We do not give orders at all; rather, everything develops on its own. But it develops on its own because what I have described is inherent in the teachers—inherent as their very life. Certainly, the children sometimes make a terrible racket; but that merely reveals their vitality. They are then just as active in what they’re supposed to do if you know how to spark their interest in it. And it has to be this way: with a so-called “good” child, you have to make use of their good qualities so that they learn something, and with a “good-for-nothing,” you have to make use of even their so-called useless qualities so that they can make progress. But one does not make progress simply by developing only the “good” qualities. One must sometimes develop the so-called “useless” qualities; one just has to be able to guide them in the right direction. For very often, it is precisely these so-called “useless” qualities in a child that constitute the very strength of an adult—qualities that, when handled correctly, can lead to the highest good in an adult.

[ 23 ] And so, once again, one must distinguish whether a child causes little trouble because it is well-behaved, or whether it causes less trouble because it is sick. If one is concerned only with one’s own convenience, it is very easy to be just as pleased with the sick child, who sits quietly and doesn’t misbehave, as with the well-behaved child—simply because one has nothing to do with the sick child. But if one truly looks into human nature, one often has much more work to do with such a child than with a so-called good-for-nothing. So here, too, it is the psychological perspective and the psychological approach—meaning, of course, in a mental and emotional sense—that matter.

[ 24 ] The point is that in the Waldorf school, the essence of teaching is placed within the school itself. Homework that overloads the children is assigned to them only in the very smallest amounts. When everything is worked out collaboratively with the teachers, the children develop some very unusual perspectives. For example, the following situation occurs in Waldorf schools—it is something quite characteristic: Some students have indeed “messed up.” Not yet fully versed in Waldorf pedagogy, the teacher tries to punish these children in a “witty” way. He says: “You have to stay after school and do math problems!”—The children cannot fathom that doing math problems is supposed to be a punishment, for it is something they do with the greatest joy. And the whole class—this has actually happened—asks: “Can’t we stay after school, too?”—Well, now you’ve “punished” them! You see, attitudes are changing completely, and it’s something that shouldn’t be the case—that a child should feel punished by having to do something they actually do with dedication, satisfaction, and joy. Our teachers come up with all sorts of ways to put an end to bad behavior. For example, it once happened to our Dr. Stein—who is quite inventive in this area—while he was teaching a higher-grade class that the children were writing letters to one another during class and passing them around. What did he do to remedy the situation? He began to talk about the postal system and discussed it in such a way that, in fact, the letter-writing gradually ceased. On the surface, the description of the postal system—the history of how correspondence came about—seemed to have nothing to do with the misbehavior the teacher had observed, and yet it did have something to do with it. For if one does not ask rationalistically, “What should I do?”—but rather if one is able to give in to one’s impulses because one has an instinct for how to behave in the classroom—then the right outcome often results; for then one can undertake something far more effective with regard to the moral improvement of the students than if one were to resort to punishments.

[ 25 ] Above all, every single student in the class must be clear that the teacher truly believes what he is teaching. It must never happen that a hot-tempered boy—who scribbles all over his papers and tugs at his neighbors’ ears and hair—is yelled at by the teacher: “You mustn’t be so impetuous; you mustn’t act out like that! Boy, if you ever act out like that again, I’ll throw this inkwell at your head!” That’s just a radical example, but it’s something that happens when one doesn’t realize that, as a role model in school, one must personally embody everything one teaches. And being matters far more than having principles or possessing knowledge. What matters, then, is the way you are. If, in the teacher certification exam—which is meant to demonstrate one’s ability to be a teacher—a person is tested solely on what they know, then in that exam they know only what they’ll later have to look up again in textbooks. But one can do that right from the start; there’s no need to make it a matter of an exam. But no one should actually enter a school who is not, in body, soul, and spirit, a true teacher-individual! That is why I can say: In putting together the teaching staff of the Waldorf School—a task that falls to me—I do not consider it an obstacle if someone has passed exams, but I do examine such a person—who has passed exams—a little more closely in certain respects than someone who, through their entire human demeanor, embodies the essence of a teacher. There is always something to be wary of when someone has passed exams; one can still be a reasonably intelligent person in that case, but one must be so despite having passed exams.

[ 26 ] And so it is remarkable how fate, how karma, works in this context. For the Waldorf School—as it is meant to stand as a specific example of this particular pedagogy grounded in an understanding of human nature—was actually only possible in Württemberg, and nowhere else, because at the very moment we established the Waldorf School, an ancient school law was still in effect there. Had that enlightenment—which later emanated from the Constituent National Assembly of Weimar and with which we are constantly struggling because they want to eliminate our lower grades—already taken hold of people back then, we would not have been able to establish the Waldorf School. For it will increasingly cease to be the case that teachers are judged according to their human individuality—rather than according to their credentials. It will become increasingly rare to teach this or that in the lower grades; for the world is moving—how shall one put it?—toward freedom and human dignity. This human dignity is then handled in a peculiar way for the school through the curriculum and the class schedule. There sits a Ministry of Education in the capital of a country. There, based on the precise guidelines issued to the education system through school regulations, they know exactly what is being taught in every school and every class. And then, somewhere in a remote corner of the country, there is a town with a school. If one now wants to know, for example, what exactly is being taught in the 5th grade of elementary school at 1:10 a.m. on July 21, 1924, one looks up the regulation at the Ministry; then one can say what is being taught there. — But here, for example, in the 5th grade, you have two parallel classes: 5A and 5B. You walk into the two classes one after the other. You are astonished to find that something completely different is taking place in the parallel class—nothing at all like what is being done in the other class. Classes 5A and 5B are entirely left to the individuality of the teacher; each teacher can do what corresponds to his or her individuality, and that is exactly what they do. Even though there is absolute agreement on the substance of the matter in the teachers’ conference, there is no regulation stipulating that one class must proceed in the same way as the parallel class in terms of education and instruction. For what is to be achieved must be achieved in the most varied ways; it is never a matter of prescribing something in an external manner. So you will find, for example, that even with the young children in first grade, one teacher might focus more on this approach to introduce the child to drawing: You walk into the classroom and see the children making all sorts of movements with their hands, which then lead to the use of a brush or a pencil. Or you might walk into another classroom and see the children dancing around to achieve the same result through the movement of their legs. Each teacher does it in the way they deem appropriate, based on the children’s individuality and their own judgment. This brings real life into the classroom, and it is through this that the children begin to feel a sense of belonging to the teacher.

[ 27 ] Of course, there was a school supervisory authority, even though that old school law was still in effect—even in Württemberg—but we got along quite well with this supervisory authority. They were incredibly understanding and accommodating whenever they saw how things worked. But there are, of course, exceptional cases. For example, a school commission once visited a class where the teacher was accustomed to having quite a bit of trouble maintaining discipline—she always had to put a lot of effort into keeping the class in order during lessons. Well, the ministerial school commission arrives, and the teacher is utterly astonished at how exemplary her class is in terms of moral and other conduct, so that she could not help but say the next day: “Children, you were really well-behaved yesterday.”—To which the whole class replies: “Well, Miss Doctor, we’re not going to trick you, are we?” — Something like an “imponderable” also emerges in the students’ behavior when they follow what I have always included at the end of my lectures: If teaching and education consist of life being vividly transmitted from one life to another, then life also emerges that develops and flourishes.