Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy II
GA 218
20 November 1922, London
II. The Art of Teaching from an Understanding of the Human Being
It might seem unusual to speak about practical questions in education from the standpoint of a particular philosophy—that is, anthroposophy. In this case, however, the reason for speaking about education arises from the practice of teaching itself.
As you know, I will speak tonight of the way of teaching being practiced at the Waldorf school in Stuttgart. The pedagogical ideas and goals proposed through anthroposophy have been, for the most part, established at the Waldorf school. A few years ago everyone was talking about problems in education, and industrialist Emil Molt decided to create a school for the children of the workers in his factory. He turned to me to provide the pedagogical content and direction for that school.
At first, we dealt only with a particular group of children who came from a particular class—proletarian children connected with the Waldorf Company and with some children whose parents were members of the Anthroposophical Society. However, we soon extended the task of the school. We began originally with about 150 children in eight classes, but we now have eleven classes and over 700 children. Before that, a group of friends within the circle of anthroposophy made a trip to Dornach, Switzerland to attend a conference on education at the Goetheanum at Christmas. As a result, I was invited to lecture at Oxford this past August. Following the Oxford lectures, the Educational Union formed in order to bring the educational principles I will discuss today to a greater application in England.
I need to mention these circumstances so you will not think our discussion this evening is to be theoretical. You should realize that I want to speak about a genuinely practical manner of educating. I need to emphasize this also because this evening we will, of course, be able to mention only a few things. Those things I can bring up will also be rather incomplete compared to the reality of those principles of education, since they are not about “programs” but about practice. When we speak of practice, we can only speak in terms of examples taken from that practice. It is much easier to talk about a program, since you can speak in generalities and about general principles. We cannot do that when speaking of the Waldorf school education due to its own distinctive characteristics. As I mentioned before, our concern is to begin pedagogy and education derived from a spiritual-scientific perspective, a perspective that can lead us to a true comprehension of the human being, and thus to a true comprehension of the nature of a child.
Painters or other artists must learn two things in order to practice their art. In the case of painters, they must first learn a particular skill for observing form and color. The artist must be able to create from the nature of form and color and cannot begin with some theoretical comprehension of them. The artist can begin only by living within the nature of form and color. Only then can the artist learn the second thing, namely, technique. Spiritual science does not comprehend education as an academic or theoretical field. Spiritual science sees it as a genuine art, as an art that uses the most noble material found in the world—human beings. Education is concerned with children who reveal so marvelously to us the deepest riddles of the cosmos. Children allow us to observe from year to year, even from week to week, how physiognomy, gestures, and everything else they express reveal spirit and soul as a divine gift of the spiritual worlds hidden deep within them. The perspective I am speaking of assumes that, just as the painter must learn to properly observe how form and color—the activity arising through the hands, soul, and spirit—result from that understanding, so the artist in teaching must be able to follow the essence of the human being revealed in the child. However, this is not possible if you do not elevate your capacity to observe above the level of common consciousness—that is, if you cannot gain a true observation of soul and spiritual activities in life. That is precisely the objective of anthroposophy. What contemporary people typically call “cognition” addresses only the corporeal—that is, what speaks to the senses. If people have not risen to a genuine comprehension of the spirit, how can they learn to understand the soul? They can gain understanding of the soul only by understanding the expressions and activities of their own soul. Through self-observation, they learn about their own thinking, about their own feeling and willing. Those are aspects of the soul. They comprehend the soul only through reasoning. The senses perceive the sense perceptible. However, such people can understand the soul only by forming a judgment about those characteristics within themselves and then concluding that they have something like a soul.
Anthroposophy does not begin with that ordinary way of thinking. Instead, it seeks to systematically develop those forces sleeping within the human soul so that (don’t be surprised by my expression) a kind of precise clairvoyance results. With precise clairvoyance, you can penetrate the characteristics of the soul to see what is truly the soul. You can perceive the soul through that spiritual vision just as you can recognize colors through the eyes or tones through the ears. Through normal consciousness we can comprehend the spirit active in the world only as a conclusion. If we insist on remaining within normal consciousness, then we can say that we see only the phenomena of nature or of the soul. From that, we conclude that a spiritual foundation exists. Our thinking concludes that spirit and soul are at the foundation of what exists physically. Anthroposophy develops forces sleeping in the soul, organs of spiritual perception through which we can experience the spirit through living thinking, not merely as a conclusion.
You can have a genuine understanding of the human being only when you have seen the soul, and when you can experience the spirit in living thought. A living understanding of the human being arises that can permeate you through spiritual science, so that you can see in every moment of the developing child’s life how the spirit and soul act in the child. You do not see the child only from outside through the senses; you see also the sense perceptible expression of the soul. You do not work with just a revelation of the soul, but with the actual substance of the soul that you can see, just as your eyes see colors. You can begin with how spirit works within the child because, through anthroposophy, you can understand how to comprehend spirit with living thought.
Thus, the art of teaching I am speaking of here begins with a living comprehension of the human being, along with a comprehension of the development taking place in the child at every moment of life. When you understand in that way how the material we work with in teaching is the most noble, when you recognize how your teaching can affect the human being, then you can see many things differently than possible through ordinary consciousness. You can then teach and give educational guidance based on that knowledge. You can, through direct practical interaction with the child, develop what you can see in the soul and experience in the spirit.
Observation that is truly alive shows that spirit exists within the child no less than in the adult. However, that spirit lies hidden deep within the child and must first conquer the body. If we can see that spirit before it speaks to us through language or reveals itself through intellectual thought, we can receive an impression of the marvelous way spirit’s divine gift affects the child’s organism. You will then get an impression of why we certainly cannot say that the physical nature of the human being is one thing, and spirit another. In children you can see how spirit, much more so than with adults, works directly on the physical—that is, how spirit completely permeates the physical. As adults, we have spirit to the extent that we need to think about the world. Children, on the other hand, have spirit to the extent that they need to form their organism through spiritual sculpting. Much more than people believe, the human physical organism throughout all of earthly life is the result of how that spirit hidden within the child develops the physical organism. To avoid speaking abstractly, I would like to present some concrete examples.
If you look at a child only as conventional science does, so that you only perceive what ordinary physiology presents through dissection—that is, if you do not have a spiritual view of the child—you will not see the effect of all the different events on the child’s physical organism. For instance, the child does something and is shouted at by an adult. That makes a very different impression on the child than it would on an adult, if one were to shout at the adult. We must remember that a child functions very differently than an adult. The adult’s sense organs exist on the surface of the body. Adults can control with their intellect what comes through the sense organs. Adults can form fully developed will from within when confronted with sense impressions. However, the child is completely surrendered to the external world. If I may express it pictorially (but I mean this to a certain degree in a literal sense), the child is entirely a sense organ. Allow me to be very clear about this. Look at an infant. If we look with an external understanding at an infant, it appears that the baby feels and sees the world just as an adult does, except that the infant’s intellect and will are not as well developed as in adults. That is, however, not the case at all. Adults feel taste only on their tongue and gums. What takes place only at the surface in adults permeates the child’s organism right into the innermost depths. In a way, children perceive taste throughout their bodies when they eat. They perceive light throughout themselves when light and colors enter their eyes. That is not simply pictorial; this is actually how it is. When light shines on children, the light vibrates not only in their nervous system, it also vibrates in their breathing and throughout their circulatory system. Light vibrates throughout the entirety of the child’s organism in just the same way light acts within the adult’s eye only. The child is, throughout the entire body, a sensing organ. Just as the eye is completely occupied with the world and lives entirely in light, children live entirely in their surroundings. Children carry spirit within themselves in order to absorb everything that lives in their physical surroundings into their entire organism. Because of this, when we yell at a child, our yelling places the entire body into a particular kind of activity. When we yell at a child, a certain inner vibration occurs that is much stronger than that in an adult, who can make certain inner counteractions. What happens then is a kind of stopping short of the spiritual and soul life, which affects the child’s physical body directly. Thus, when we often yell at and frighten a child, we affect not only the child’s soul, but the child’s entire physical body. Depending on how we act around children, we can affect the health of human beings all the way into the final years of old age.
The most important means of teaching a very young child is through the way we, as adults, act when in the child’s presence. If children experience a continuous hustle and bustle, a continuous hastiness in their environment, then they will take up an inner tendency toward haste within their physical body. If you truly understand human beings so that you can observe their spirit and soul, you can see in children of eleven or twelve whether they were brought up in a restless or hurried environment, in a more appropriate environment, or in one where everything moved too slowly. We can see it in the way they walk. If the child was brought up in a hurried environment, one where everything proceeded with extreme restlessness, one where impressions continually changed, then the child will walk with a light step. The kind of environment the child had makes an impression on the child, even in the way of walking, in the step. If a child had insufficient stimulus in the surroundings so that continuous boredom was experienced, we see the reverse in how the child walks in later life with a heavy step. I mention these examples because they are particularly visible, and because they show how we can observe people better. Through this example, you can see what we are able to give to children when we see them properly in early childhood. During early childhood, children imitate their surroundings. They are particularly imitative in learning what they should do in their souls—that is, what is moral. I would like to give an example of this as well.
Those who have had to deal with such things can also experience them. For example, a father once came to me and said that his son had always been a good boy and had always done what the parents had found morally pleasing. But, now he had stolen money. Well, in such a case, anyone who truly understands human nature would ask where the child had taken the money. The father replied, “from the cupboard.” I then asked further whether someone removed money from the cupboard every day. “The child’s mother,” was the reply; thus, the child had seen the mother remove money from the cupboard every day. Young children are imitative beings who dedicate the entire soul to their surroundings, and, therefore, they do what they see happening in the surroundings. The young child does not respond to reprimands, does not respond to “do” and “don’t.” Such things are not strongly connected with a child’s soul. Children do only what they see happening in their surroundings. However, children see things much more exactly than adults do, even though they are unconscious of what it is they see. What children see in their surroundings leaves an imprint on their organism. The entire organism of the child is an imprint of what occurs in the surroundings.
Contemporary understanding overvalues way too much what is called “heredity.” When people see the characteristics of some adult, they often say such traits are inherited by purely physical transfer from one generation to another. Those who truly understand human beings, however, see that children’s muscles develop according to the impressions from their surroundings. They can see that, depending on whether or not we treat a child with tenderness and care, with love or in some other manner, the child’s breathing and circulation develop according to the feelings experienced. If a child often experiences someone approaching with love, who instinctively falls into step with the child and moves at the tempo required by the child’s inner nature, then the child will, in subtle ways, develop healthy lungs. If you want to know where the traits for a healthy adult physical body arise from, you must look back to when the child was affected as one great sense organ. You must look at the words, the gestures, and the entire relationship of the child to the surroundings, and how these things affected the child’s muscles, circulation, and breathing. You will see that a child imitates not just in learning to speak—which depends entirely on imitation, even into the bodily organization that makes speech possible—but you will see that the child’s whole body, particularly in the more subtle aspects of the physical body, reflects what we do in the child’s presence.
To the extent that a person’s physical body is strong or weak, that the physical body can be depended upon, gratitude or blame for the way one walks through life, even in old age, is due to the impressions made on a person as a small child.
What I just said about growing children being imitative beings applies throughout the first period of childhood, that is, from birth until the change of teeth at approximately age seven. At that time, the child goes through many more changes than is generally thought. In order to build a secure foundation for a genuine art of education and teaching, we need to fully penetrate what occurs in the child’s development; that is what I want to discuss in the second part of the lecture after this first part has been translated.
(Rudolf Steiner paused at this point while George Adams delivered the first part of this lecture in English.)
At around age seven, the change of teeth is not just a physical symptom of transformation in human physical nature, but also indicates the complete transformation of the child’s soul. The child is primarily an imitative being until the change of teeth. It is in the child’s nature to depend on the forces that arise from imitation for the physical body’s development. After approximately age seven and the change of teeth, children no longer need to be physically devoted to their environment, but instead need to be able to be devoted with the soul. Everything that occurs in the child’s presence before the change of teeth penetrates the depths of that child’s being. What penetrates the child during the second period of life is due to an acceptance of the authority of the child’s teachers. The child’s desire to learn such adult arts as reading and writing does not arise out of the child’s own nature, but expresses the acceptance of that natural authority. It is a tragic pedagogical error if you believe children have any desire to learn those things, things that serve as communication for adults! What actually acts developmentally on a child are the things that arise from the child’s loving devotion toward an accepted authority. Children do not learn what they learn for any reason found in the instruction itself. Children learn because they see what an adult knows and is able to do, and because an adult who is the child’s accepted educational authority says this or that is something appropriate to be learned. That goes right to the child’s moral foundation.
I would remind you that the child learns morality through imitation until the change of teeth. From the age of seven until about fourteen—that is, from the change of teeth until puberty—the child learns everything through loving acceptance of authority. We cannot achieve anything with children through the intellect, that is, with commandments such as “this is good” or “that is evil.” Instead, a feeling must grow within the child to discover what is good based on what the accepted authority indicates as good. The child must also learn to feel displeasure with what that accepted authority presents as evil. Children may not have any reason for finding pleasure or displeasure in good or evil things other than those revealed by the authority standing beside them. It is not important that things appear good or evil to the child’s intellect, but that they are so for the teacher. This is necessary for true education.
It is important during that period for all morality, including religion, to be presented to the child by other human beings; the human relationship with the teachers is important. Whenever we think we teach children by approaching them through intellectual reasoning, we really teach in a way that merely brings inner death to much within them. Although children at that age are no longer entirely a sense organ, and their sense organs have now risen to the surface of the body, they still have their entire soul within. Children gain nothing through intellectualization, which brings a kind of systemization to the senses, but they can accept what the recognized authority of the teacher brings to them as an ensouled picture.
From the change of teeth until puberty, we must form all our teaching artistically; we must begin everywhere from an artistic perspective. If we teach children letters, from which they are to learn to read and write as is now commonly done, then they will have absolutely no relationship to those characters. We know, of course, that the letters of the alphabet arose in earlier civilizations from a pictorial imitation of external processes in things. Writing began with pictograms. When we teach the letters of the alphabet to the child, we must also begin with pictures. Thus, in our Waldorf school in Stuttgart, we do not begin with letters; we begin with instruction in painting and drawing. That is difficult for a child of six or seven years, just entering school, but we soon overcome the difficulties. We can overcome those difficulties by standing alongside the child with a proper attitude, carried within our authority in such a way that the child does indeed want to imitate what the teacher creates with form and color. The child wants to do the same as the teacher does. Children must learn everything along that indirect path. That is possible only, however, when both an external and an internal relationship exists between the teacher and pupil, which occurs when we fill all our teaching with artistic content. An unfathomable, impenetrable relationship exists between the teacher and child. Mere educational techniques and the sort of things teachers learn are not effective; the teacher’s attitude, along with its effect on the feelings of the child, is most effective; the attitude carried within the teacher’s soul is effective. You will have the proper attitude in your soul when you as a teacher can perceive the spiritual in the world.
I would like to give you another example to illustrate what I mean. This is an example I particularly like to use. Suppose we want to stimulate the child in a moral-religious way. This would be the proper way to do so for the nine- or ten-year-old. In the kind of education I am describing, you can read from the child’s development what you need to teach each year, even each month. Suppose I want to give a child of about nine an idea of the immortality of the human soul. I could tiptoe around it intellectually, but that would not leave a lasting impression on the child. It might even harm the child’s soul, because when I give an intellectual presentation about moralreligious issues nothing enters the child’s soul. What remains in the child’s soul results from intangible things between the teacher and child. However, I can give the child an experience of the immortality of the soul through artistically formed pictures. I could say, “Look at a butterfly’s cocoon and how the butterfly breaks through the cocoon. It flies away and moves about in the sunlight. The human soul in the human body is the same as the butterfly in the cocoon. When a human being passes through the gates of death, the soul leaves the body and then moves about in the spiritual world.”
Now, you can teach that to children in two ways. You can feel yourself to be above children and think that you are wise and children are dumb. You might feel that children cannot understand what you, in your wisdom, can understand about the immortality of the soul, so you will create a picture for them.
If I make up such a picture for the children while feeling myself to be superior to them, that will make an impression on the children that soon passes, but it leaves a withered place within them. However, I can also approach the child differently, with the attitude that I believe in this picture myself. I can see that I do not simply fabricate the picture, but that divine spiritual powers have placed the butterfly and cocoon into nature. The fluttering of the butterfly out of the cocoon is a real picture within nature and the world of what I should understand as the immortality of the soul. The emergence of the butterfly confronts me with the idea of immortality in a simple and primitive way. It was God Himself who wanted to show me something through that emerging butterfly. Only when I can develop such a belief in my pictures is the invisible and supersensible relationship between the child and myself effective. If I develop my own comprehension with that depth of soul and then give it to the child, that picture takes root in the child and develops further throughout life. If we transform everything into a pictorial form between the change of teeth and puberty, we do not teach the child static concepts that the child will retain unchanged. If we teach children static concepts, it would be the same as if we were to clamp their hands in machines so that they could no longer freely grow. It is important that we teach children inwardly flexible concepts. Such concepts can grow just as our limbs do, so that what we develop within the child can become something very different when the child matures.
Such things can be judged only by those who do not merely look at children and ask what their needs are or what their developmental capacities are. Only those who can survey all of human life can judge these things, which then become a rather intuitive way of teaching. I could give you an example of this. Suppose we have a school-age child that has inner devotion toward the teacher. I would like to illustrate the strength that could develop through an example. Those with insight into such things know how fortunate it is for later life when, during childhood, they heard about a respected relative they had not yet seen. Then, one day, they had the opportunity to visit that person. They went to visit that relative with a shyness and with everything that was contained in the picture developed within them. They stood there shyly as the door was opened. That first encounter with a highly respected person is certainly memorable. To have had the opportunity to respect someone in that way is something that takes deep root in the human soul, and it can still bear fruit in later life.
It is the same with all truly living concepts taught to children and not simply stuffed into them. If you can get a child to look up with true respect to you as a teacher, as an accepted authority, you then create something for the child’s later life. We could describe it as follows. We know that there are people who, when they have reached a certain age, spread goodness in their environment. They do not need to say much, but their words act as a kind of blessing; it is contained in their voice, not in the content of their words. It is certainly a blessing for people when, during their childhood, they met such people. If we look back on the life of such a person of fifty or sixty and see what occurred during childhood between the change of teeth and puberty, if we look at what that person learned, we realize that person learned respect, a respect for morality. We realize that such a person learned to look up to things properly, to look up to the higher forces in the world. We might say that such a person learned how to pray properly. When someone learns to pray in the right way, the respect they learn is transformed into powers of blessing in old age, powers that act like a good deed for others in their presence. To express it pictorially, someone who never learned to fold their hands in prayer as a child will never develop the strength later in life to spread their hands in blessing.
It is important that we do not simply stuff abstract ideas into children, but that we know how to proceed with children when we want to create within their souls something fruitful for all of life. Therefore, we do not abstractly teach children to read and write, but begin artistically with writing and allow all the abstraction within letters to arise from pictures. In that way, we teach children to write in a way appropriate to the child’s needs. We do not simply appeal to the child’s capacity to observe, to the head alone, but to the entire human being. First, we teach children to write. When the child has learned to write in this way—so that the child’s entire being, and not simply the head, participates in the picture—then what we give the child is appropriate. After children learn to write, they can learn to read. Anyone caught up in today’s school system might say that such children would learn to read and write more slowly than otherwise. However, it is important that the tempo of learning is proper. Basically, children should learn to read only after the age of eight, so that we can develop reading and writing pictorially and artistically.
Those who have genuine knowledge of human beings through true vision of soul and spirit can observe subtle details and then bring those observations into teaching. Suppose we have a child who walks too heavily. That comes about because the child’s soul was improperly affected before the change of teeth. We can improve the situation by enlivening what previously formed the child by teaching through artistically presented pictures. Thus, someone who truly understands the human being will teach a child who walks too heavily about painting and drawing. By contrast, a child whose step is too light, too dancing, should be guided more toward music. That has a tremendous moral effect on the child’s later character development. Thus, in each case, if we can truly see the human being, we will understand what we need to bring into our pictures.
Until the change of teeth the child’s closest and most appropriate place is within the circle of the family and the parents. Nursery school and play groups follow. We can appropriately develop games and activities when we understand how they affect the child’s physical organism. We need only imagine what happens when a child receives a store-bought doll, a “beautiful” doll with a beautifully painted face. We can see that such a child develops thick blood (these things are not visible in the normal anatomy) and that this disturbs the child’s physical body. We simply do not realize how much we sin in that way, how it affects the child. If we make for the child a doll from a few rags, and if this is done with the child—simply painting the eyes on the rags so that the child sees this and sees how we create the doll—then the child will take that activity into its body. It enters into the child’s blood and respiratory system.
Suppose we have a melancholic girl. Anyone who looks at such a child externally, without any view of the soul, would simply say, “Oh, a melancholic child; inwardly dark. We need to put very bright colors around her and make toys red and yellow for her wherever possible. We must dress the child brightly, so that she awakens in bright colors, so that she will be awakened.” No, she won’t! That would only be an inner shock for the child, and it would force all her life forces in the opposite direction. We should give a melancholic and withdrawn child blue or blue violet colors and toys. Otherwise, the bright colors would overstimulate such an inwardly active child. We can thus bring the child’s organism into harmony with her surroundings and cure what is perhaps too flighty and nervous because of being surrounded by bright colors. From a genuine understanding of the human being, we can gain an idea of what we should teach and do with children, right down to the finest details, and thus gain direct help for our work. You can see that this way of teaching might seem to support current ideas about what children should learn at a particular age—that we should stuff such things into them and about how we should occupy them. However, if you realize that children can take from their environment only what already exists within their bodies, then you might say the following. Suppose we have a child who does not tend to be robustly active, but always works in details—that is, tends to work rather artistically. If you insist that the child be very active outwardly, then just those tendencies within the child that are for detailed work will wither. The tendencies toward activity that you want to develop because you have deluded yourself into thinking that they are common to all humanity, that everyone should develop them, will also certainly wither. The child has no interest in that; the work assigned between the change of teeth and puberty is done, and nothing sticks, nothing grows within the child through forcing things. Throughout the kind of education we are discussing, it is always important that the teacher have a good sense of what lives within the child and can, from what is observed within the child’s body, soul, and spirit, practice every moment what is right through the teacher’s own instinct for teaching.
In this way, the teacher can see the pedagogy needed for the children. In the Waldorf school, we discover the curriculum in each child. We read from the children everything we are to do from year to year and month to month and week to week so that we can bring them what is appropriate and what their inner natures require. The teaching profession demands a tremendous amount of selflessness, and because of this it cannot in any way accept a preconceived program. We need to direct our teaching entirely toward working with the children so that the teacher, through the relationship to the children developed by standing alongside them, provides nothing but an opportunity for the children to develop themselves.
You can best accomplish this between the ages of seven and fourteen—that is, during elementary school—by refraining completely from appealing to the intellect, focusing instead on the artistic. Then, you can develop through pictures what the body, soul, and spirit need. Therefore, we should present morality as pictures when the child is about nine or ten years old. We should not provide moral commandments; we should not say that this or that is good or evil. Instead, we should present good people to the children so that they can acquire sympathy for what is good, or perhaps, present the children with evil people so that they can acquire antipathy toward what is evil. Through pictures we can awaken a feeling for the nature of morality. All of those things are, of course, only suggestions that I wanted to present concerning the second stage of childhood. In the third part of my lecture today, I want to show how we can bring it all together as a foundation for education—not merely education for a particular time in childhood, but for all of human life. We will continue with that after the second part has been translated.
(George Adams delivered the second part of the lecture.)
We can best see how this way of educating can achieve the proper effects for all of human life if we look specifically at eurythmy in education. The eurythmy we have performed publicly in London during the past days has a pedagogical side, also.
Eurythmy is an art in which people or groups of people express the movements in the depths of human nature. Everything expressed in those movements arises systematically from the activity within the human organism, just as human speech or song does. In eurythmy, no gesture or movement is haphazard. What we have is a kind of visible speech. We can express anything we can sing or speak just as well through the visible movements of eurythmy. The capacity of the entire human being for movement is repressed in speech, it undergoes a metamorphosis in the audible tones and is formed as visible speech in eurythmy.
We have brought eurythmy into the Waldorf school for the lowest grades all the way to the highest. The children, in fact, enter into this visible speech just as the soul makes a corresponding expression for the sounds of audible speech. Every movement of the fingers or hands, every movement of the entire body is thus a sound of speech made visible. We have seen that children between the change of teeth and puberty live just as naturally into this form of speech as a young child lives into normal audible speech. We have seen that the children’s entire organism—that is, body, soul, and spirit (since eurythmy is also a spirit and soul exercise) find their way just as naturally into eurythmy speech as they do into oral speech. Children feel they have been given something consistent with their whole organism. Thus, along with gymnastics derived from an observation of the physical body, we have eurythmy arising from an observation of the child’s spirit and soul. Children feel fulfilled in eurythmy movements, not only in their physical body or in an ensouled body, but in a spiritually permeated soul within a body formed by that soul. To say it differently, what people experience through eurythmy acts in a tremendously living manner on everything living within them as tendencies and, on the other side, has just as fruitful an effect on all of life.
Regardless of how well children do in gymnastics, if they perform these exercises only according to the laws of the physical body, these exercises will not protect the children from all kinds of metabolic illnesses later in life. For instance, you cannot protect them from illnesses such as rheumatism, which may cause metabolic illnesses later. What you gain through gymnastics results in a kind of thickening of the physical body. However, what you can effect by developing movements that arise from the spirit and soul makes the spirit and soul ruler of the bodies of the soul and physical for all of life. You cannot keep a sixty-year-old body from becoming fragile through gymnastics. If you educate a child properly, however, so that the child’s movements in gymnastics arise from the soul, you can keep the child’s body from becoming fragile in later life. You can inhibit such things if you teach pictorially during elementary school so that the picture that would otherwise occupy the soul can move into the body.
Thus, this pictorial language, eurythmy, is nothing but gymnastics permeated with soul and spirit. You can see that gymnastics permeated by soul and spirit is directed only toward a balanced development of the child’s body, soul, and spirit; and you can see that what can be ingrained during childhood can be fruitful throughout life. We can do that only when we feel like gardeners tending plants. The gardener will not, for example, artificially affect the plant’s sap flow, but will provide from outside only opportunities for the plant to develop itself. A gardener has a kind of natural reluctance to artificially alter plant growth. We must also have a respectfulness about what children need to develop within their own lives. We will, therefore, always be careful not to teach children in an unbalanced way. The principle of authority I discussed before must live deeply within the child’s soul. Children must have the possibility of learning things they cannot yet intellectually comprehend, but learn anyway because they love the teacher. Thus, we do not take away from children the possibility of experiencing things later in life.
If I have already comprehended everything as a child, then I could never have the following kind of experience. Suppose something happens to me around age thirty-five that reminds me of something I learned from a beloved teacher or a loved authority, something I had learned from that authority through my desire to believe. However, now I am more mature and slowly a new understanding arises within me. Returning in maturity to things we learned earlier, but did not fully comprehend, has an enlivening effect. It gives an inner satisfaction and strengthens the will. We cannot take that away from children if we respect their freedom and if we want to educate them as free human beings. The foundation of the educational principle I am referring to is the desire to educate people as free beings. That is why we should not develop the child’s will through intellectual moral reasoning. We need to be clear that when we develop moral views in the child’s feeling between the ages of seven and fourteen, the child can, after maturing and moving into life, then comprehend intellectual and moral feelings and the will. What permeates the will, and what arises out of the will from the esthetic feeling developed earlier, enlivens morality and, insofar as it arises from freedom, gives people strength and inner certitude.
You see, if you want to use the kind of education we are discussing properly, you will not simply look at childhood, but will also look at people later in life. You will want what you give to children to act just as the natural growth and development of the plant acts to produce a flower that blooms. If we want a blossoming, we do not dare to want the plant to develop too quickly. Instead, we await the slow development from the root to the stem to the leaf to the flower and, finally, to the fruit, unfolding and developing freely in the sunlight. That is the picture we need to keep before us as the goal of education. Our desire is to nurture the root of life in children. However, we want to develop this root so that life slowly and flexibly forms physically, soulfully, and spiritually from our care during childhood. We can be certain that, if we respect human freedom, our teaching will place people in the world as free beings. We can be certain that the root of education can develop freely if we do not enslave children to a dogmatic curriculum. Later in life, under the most varied circumstances, children can develop appropriately as free human beings.
Of course, this kind of education puts tremendous demands on the teacher. However, do we dare presume that the most complete being here on Earth—the human being—can be taught at all if we do not penetrate fully the characteristics of that being? Shouldn’t we believe—concerning human beings and what we do with them—that they hold a place of honor, and that much of what we do is a kind of religious service? We must believe that. We must be aware that education demands of us the greatest level of selflessness. We must be able to forget ourselves completely and plunge into the nature of the child in order to see what will blossom in the world as an adult human being. Selflessness and a true desire to deepen your understanding of human nature, and gaining a true understanding of humanity—these are the basic elements of genuine teaching.
Why shouldn’t we recognize the necessity of devotion to such teaching, since we must certainly admit that teaching is the most noble activity of human life? Teaching is the most noble thing in all human life on the Earth.
That is progress. The progress we achieve through teaching is this: the younger generations, given to us from the divine worlds, develop through what we, the older generations, have developed in ourselves; and these younger generations move a step beyond us in human progress. Isn’t it obvious to every right-thinking person that, in bringing such service to humanity—that is, in bringing the best and most beautiful things of previous generations as an offering to the younger generations—we teach in the most beautiful and humane way?
(George Adams concluded the English translation.)
Erziehungskunst Durch Menschenerkenntnis
Es könnte sonderbar erscheinen, daß von dem Gesichtspunkt einer ganz bestimmten Weltanschauung — der anthroposophischen Geisteswissenschaft — über praktische Erziehungsfragen gesprochen werden soll. Allein die Veranlassung, über Erziehung zu sprechen, stammt in diesem Falle aus der Erziehungspraxis selbst.
Sie haben eben gehört, daß diejenige Erziehungskunst, von der ich mir erlauben werde, heute abend zu Ihnen zu sprechen, praktisch ausgeübt wird in der Waldorfschule. Und diese Waldorfschule hat ja auch dazu geführt, dasjenige, was vorher mehr an Ideen, an Zielrichtungen aus der von mir vertretenen Weltanschauung über Erziehung gesagt werden konnte, in breiterem Umfange auszugestalten. Als vor einigen Jahren gerade die Erziehungsfragen, man möchte sagen, in aller Munde waren, da handelte es sich darum, daß der Stuttgarter Industrielle Emil Molt eine Schule begründen wollte, zunächst für die Kinder seines industriellen Etablissements. Er wandte sich dazu an mich, um dieser Schule einen entsprechenden pädagogischen Inhalt und eine pädagogische Richtung zu geben. |
Zunächst hatte man es mit einem Schülermaterial einer ganz bestimmten Klasse und auch mit einem Schülermaterial einer bestimmten Gesellschaft, die eine Weltanschauung pflegt, zu tun: man hatte es zu tun mit den Proletarierkindern des industriellen Waldorfunternehmens, und man hatte es zu tun mit einer Anzahl von Kindern aus der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft. Aber sehr bald erweiterte sich die Aufgabe dieser Schule. Während wir begonnen haben mit etwa hundertfünfzig Kindern in acht Schulklassen, haben wir heute elf Schulklassen mit über siebenhundert Kindern. Das hat dazu geführt, daß ich im August dieses Jahres eingeladen wurde, über die Prinzipien dieser Waldorfschule hier in England, in Oxford, einen Vortragszyklus zu halten, nachdem einige Freunde der anthroposophischen Weltanschauung bereits zu Weihnachten im Goetheanum in Dornach erschienen waren, um dort einen Vortragszyklus über diese Erziehungskunst anzuhören. Aus dem Oxforder Vortragsunternehmen ist dann die Erziehungs-Union hervorgegangen, die sich hier gegründet hat und welche die Absicht hat, die Erziehungsprinzipien, von denen ich heute abend zu sprechen habe, auch in England in einem weiteren Umfange zur Einführung zu bringen.
Ich mußte diese Veranlassungen erwähnen, damit Sie heute abend nicht die Vorstellung haben, daß es sich um theoretische Auseinandersetzungen handelt, sondern damit sie Einsicht darein haben, daß aus einer wirklich praktischen Erziehungskunst heraus gesprochen werden soll. Ich mußte das um so mehr tun, weil ich ja selbstverständlich heute abend nur in der Lage sein werde, einige wenige Andeutungen zu geben. Diese Anregungen, die ich geben werde, werden um so unvollständiger sein müssen, als es sich wirklich bei den Erziehungsprinzipien, von denen ich hier spreche, nicht um ein Programm handelt, sondern um eine Praxis. Und wenn es sich um eine Praxis handelt, kann man immer nur einiges, ich möchte sagen, beispielsweise aus dieser Praxis anführen. Wer von einem Programm ausgeht, hat es leichter: Er führt allgemeine Sätze an, allgemeine Maximen. Das geht gerade bei der besonderen Eigentümlichkeit jener Erziehungsprinzipien nicht, von denen die Waldorfschul-Erziehung ausgeht. Ich sagte schon, daß es sich handelt um eine Begründung der Pädagogik und Erziehung aus einer geisteswissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung heraus, einer solchen Weltauffassung, welche zu einer wirklichen Menschenkenntnis und dadurch auch zu einer wirklichen Erkenntnis des Wesens des Kindes führen kann.
Wenn der Maler oder ein anderer Künstler seine Kunst ausüben will, muß er sich zweierlei aneignen. Er muß sich erstens — nehmen wir das Beispiel des Malers — eine gewisse Beobachtungsgabe aneignen für Form und Farbe. Er muß aus dem Farb- und Formwesen heraus schaffen können. Er kann nicht ausgehen von einer theoretischen Erkenntnis, er kann nur ausgehen von einem lebendigen Drinnenleben im Form- und Farbenwesen. Dann erst kommt das, was er sich als zweites anzueignen hat: die Technik selbst. Erziehungswesen wird hier von anthroposophischer Geisteswissenschaft nicht aufgefaßt als eine Wissenschaft, nicht als eine theoretische Erkenntnis, sondern als eine wirkliche Kunst, als eine Kunst, die es mit dem edelsten Material, das wir in der Welt haben, zu tun hat: mit dem Menschen selber, mit dem Kinde, das in so wunderbarer Weise uns die tiefsten Welträtsel offenbart, indem es von Jahr zu Jahr, ja man möchte sagen, von Woche zu Woche uns schauen läßt, wie herauskommt aus der Physiognomie, aus der Geste, aus alledem, was sonst die Äußerungen des Lebens des Kindes sind, wie da herauskommt das Geistige, das Seelische, das tief innerlich verschlossen ist in dem Kinde als eine göttliche Mitgift aus geistigen Welten. Die Anschauung, von der ich hier spreche, geht davon aus, daß ebenso wie es notwendig ist für den Maler, eine Beobachtungsgabe, die Tätigkeit wird durch seine Hände, seine Seele, seinen Geist, eine Beobachtungsgabe für Farbe und Form sich anzueignen, so ist es notwendig für den Erziehungskünstler, daß er verfolgen kann die ganze Wesenheit des Menschen, wie sie sich offenbart in dem Kinde. Das aber kann man nicht, wenn man nicht aufsteigt von der Beobachtung desjenigen, was das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein dem Menschen gibt an Menschenbeobachtung, wenn man nicht aufsteigen kann zu einer wirklichen Beobachtung des seelischen und des geistigen Lebens. Und das will gerade anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft. Was man heute Erkenntnis nennt, kann sich eigentlich nur beschäftigen mit dem, was körperlich ist, was zu den Sinnen spricht. Wie lernen wir als Menschen heute, wenn wir nicht aufsteigen zu einer wirklichen Geisteserkenntnis, das Seelische kennen? Eigentlich nur dadurch, daß wir in uns selbst die Äußerungen, die Tätigkeiten des Seelischen kennenlernen. Wir lernen kennen, indem wir Selbstbeobachtung erstreben, unser Denken, wir lernen kennen unser Fühlen, unser Wollen. Das sind Eigenschaften des Seelischen. Das Seelische selbst haben wir nur, ich möchte sagen, durch ein Urteil. Das Sinnliche sehen wir, das Sinnliche nehmen wir wahr. Das Seelische haben wir nur, indem wir von Eigenschaften unseres eigenen Inneren uns das Urteil bilden, daß uns selbst so etwas zugrunde liege wie ein Seelisches.
Anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft, wie ich sie hier meine, geht nicht aus von diesem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein, sondern sie sucht in der Menschenseele schlummernde Kräfte auf ganz systematische Weise zu entwickeln, so daß daraus entsteht — bitte erschrecken Sie nicht vor dem Ausdrucke - eine Art exakten Hellsehens, exakte Clairvoyance. Dadurch schaut man. hindurch von den Eigenschaften des Seelischen auf das wirkliche Seelische. Und man lernt dieses Seelische durch ein geistiges Schauen gerade so erkennen, wie man erkennen lernt die sinnliche Farbe durch das Auge, die sinnlichen Töne durch die Ohren. Den Geist aber, der in der Welt waltet, kennt das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein eigentlich nur durch eine Schlußfolgerung. Wir können immer nur, wenn wir in dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein verharren, sagen: Wir sehen Naturerscheinungen, Seelenerscheinungen. Wir schließen daraus, daß all dem ein Geistiges zugrunde liegt. Unsere Gedanken beschäftigen sich damit, zu schließen, daß dem Körperlichen ein Seelisches, ein Geistiges zugrunde liegt. Anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft entwickelt in der Seele schlummernde Kräfte, die GeistesSinnesorgane, wenn ich mich des paradoxen Ausdrucks bedienen darf, durch die man den Geist nicht nur erschließen kann, sondern in lebendigem Denken selbst erlebt.
Dann erst, wenn man die Seele schaut, den Geist in lebendigem Denken erleben kann, dann kann man wirkliche Menschenerkenntnis haben. Dann kommt durch eine Geisteswissenschaft eine solche lebendige Menschenerkenntnis zustande, welche den Menschen durchdringen kann, so daß er in dem heranwachsenden Kinde in jedem Momente des Lebens schauen kann, wie das Geistige, wie das Seelische in dem Kinde wirkt. Er sieht das Kind nicht nur, wenn ich so sagen darf, durch die Sinne von außen an, sondern er sieht, wie sich in den sinnlichen Offenbarungen das Seelische äußert. Denn er geht aus von dem, was nicht nur seelische Offenbarung, sondern unmittelbar seelische Substanz ist, die gesehen werden kann wie die Farbe von den Augen. Er geht davon aus, wie der Geist in dem Kinde wirkt, weil er erkennt, weil ihm diese Erkenntnis eine Wissenschaft liefert, die in lebendigem Denken den Geist selber erfaßt.
So geht diese Erziehungskunst, von der ich hier spreche, von einer lebendigen Menschenerkenntnis, von einer Erfassung des Werdenden im Kinde in jedem Augenblicke des Lebens aus. Erst wenn man in dieser Weise, ich möchte sagen, das edelste Material, das wir haben können für eine Kunst, das Material für eine Erziehungskunst — wenn man in dieser Weise den Menschen durchschaut, wenn man wirklich auch erzieherisch für den Menschen wirkt, dann sieht man ganz andere Dinge, als man mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein sehen kann. Und dann kann man aus einer solchen Wissenschaft heraus Lehrern und Erziehern Anleitung geben, wie sie im unmittelbaren praktischen Verkehre mit dem Kinde auch ausbilden können dasjenige, was als Seele selbst erschaut werden kann, als Geist selbst erlebt werden kann.
Im Kinde — das zeigt eben eine lebendige Beobachtung - ist der Geist in nicht geringerem Maße vorhanden als in dem Erwachsenen; aber dieser Geist ist tief im Inneren des Kindes verschlossen, muß sich den Leib erst erobern. Und wir bekommen einen Eindruck davon, in welch wunderbarer Weise der Geist, der als göttliche Mitgift dem Kinde gegeben ist, in dem kindlichen Organismus wirkt, wenn wir diesen Geist selber sehen können, bevor er durch die Sprache zu uns redet, bevor er durch intellektualistisches Denken sich uns offenbaren kann. Da bekommt man einen Eindruck davon, wie durchaus nicht gesagt werden darf: die physische Natur des Menschen ist das eine, das Geistige ist das andere. Im Kinde schaut man die physische Natur so, daß unmittelbar, viel mehr als das beim Erwachsenen jemals der Fall sein kann, das Geistige innerlich an dem Physischen arbeitet, das Geistige ganz das Physische durchtränkt. Als Erwachsene haben wir Geist, indem wir den Geist brauchen, um über die Welt zu denken. Das Kind hat Geist, indem es den Geist braucht, um selbst erst wie der geistige Bildhauer den eigenen Organismus zu gestalten. Und viel mehr als man glaubt, ist der physische Organismus des Menschen durch das ganze folgende Erdenleben hindurch ein Geschöpf desjenigen, was das im Kinde verschlossene Geistige gerade an diesem physischen Organismus verrichtet. Dafür gestatten Sie mir, Ihnen zunächst, damit ich nicht bloß in abstrakten Gedanken rede, sondern in konkreten, einiges beispielsmäßig zu sagen.
Wer nur äußerlich, mit physischer Wissenschaft das Kind ansieht, das Kind so anschaut, wie uns der Seziertisch oder die gewöhnliche Physiologie seine Organisation gibt — nicht eine geistige Durchschauung —, der sieht nicht, wie alle einzelnen Gesten, die auf das Kind geschehen, sich im physischen Organismus auswirken, ausleben. Ich will einmal sagen: das Kind wird angeschrien; es ist in irgendeiner Tätigkeit, es wird von dem Erwachsenen angeschrien. Es gibt einen ganz anderen Eindruck auf das Kind, wenn es vom Erwachsenen angeschrien wird, als wenn wir einen Erwachsenen anschreien. Wenn wir das Kind anschreien, so müßten wir bedenken, daß das Kind noch ganz anders organisiert ist als der Erwachsene. Der Erwachsene hat seine Sinnesorgane an der Oberfläche seines Organismus; er beherrscht dasjenige, was ihm die Sinnesorgane geben, mit seinem Intellekt. Er gestaltet aus dem Inneren heraus gegenüber den Sinneseindrücken den voll entwickelten Willen. Das Kind ist ganz hingegeben der äußeren Welt. Das Kind ist, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf - es ist nicht bildlich, es ist ganz real gemeint -, das Kind ist ganz Sinnesorgan. Ich möchte mich ganz deutlich aussprechen: Betrachten wir einen Säugling. Wenn wir ihn mit der äußeren Erkenntnis anschauen, so scheint es uns so, als ob er ebenso empfinden würde, ebenso die Welt betrachten würde wie ein Erwachsener, nur daß sein Intellekt, sein Wille noch nicht so ausgebildet ist wie bei einem Erwachsenen. Das ist nicht der Fall. Der Erwachsene fühlt sozusagen den Geschmack bloß auf Zunge und Gaumen. Was beim Erwachsenen schon an die Oberfläche des Organismus getreten ist, durchdringt beim Kinde den Organismus viel tiefer nach dem Inneren hin. Das Kind wird gewissermaßen ganz Geschmacksempfindung, wenn es die Nahrung zu sich nimmt, ebenso ganz Lichtempfindung, wenn Licht, wenn Farben in seine Augen dringen. Es ist nicht bloß bildlich gesprochen, es ist eine Wirklichkeit: wenn das Kind dem Lichte ausgesetzt wird, so vibriert das Licht nicht nur durch sein Nervensystem, es vibriert durch seine Atmung, durch sein Blutsystem, es vibriert so durch den ganzen Organismus, wie das Licht beim Erwachsenen im Auge allein tätig ist. Das Kind ist innerlich ganz Sinnesorgan. Und wie das Auge hingegeben ist an die Welt, ganz im Lichte lebt, so lebt das Kind ganz in seiner Umgebung. Es trägt den Geist in sich, um das, was in seiner physischen Umgebung lebt, mit seinem ganzen Organismus aufzunehmen. Wenn wir daher das Kind anschreien, so ist sein Organismus in einer ganz bestimmten Tätigkeit. Dadurch, daß wir es anschreien, vibriert in dem Kinde viel stärker etwas in sein Inneres, als das beim Erwachsenen, der Gegenkräfte hat, die sich im Inneren regen, der Fall sein kann. Und das, was da bewirkt wird wie ein Stocken des seelisch-geistigen Lebens des Kindes, das überträgt sich beim Kinde unmittelbar auf die körperliche Organisation. Und kommt es öfter vor, daß wir ein Kind anschreien, auch etwa in Schrecken versetzen, dann wirken wir nicht bloß auf die Seele des Kindes, dann wirken wir auf die ganze physische Organisation des Kindes. Die Gesundheit des erwachsenen Menschen bis ins späteste Alter liegt in unserer Hand, je nachdem wir uns in der Umgebung des Kindes verhalten.
Das wichtigste Erziehungsmittel für ein Kind im ersten Lebensalter ist, wie man sich selber als Erwachsener in seiner Umgebung verhält. Ist das Kind ausgesetzt einem fortwährenden Leben und Treiben, das schnell verläuft, einem Hasten in seiner Umgebung, so wird einfach seine ganze physische Organisation die Neigung in sich aufnehmen, innerlich zu hasten. Und wer ein Menschenkenner ist, so daß er vom Geiste und von der Seele in der Beobachtung ausgehen kann, der sieht einem Kinde im elften, zwölften Lebensjahre an, ob es so behandelt worden ist, daß es in einer unruhigen, hastenden Umgebung war, oder in einer ihm angemessenen Umgebung, oder in einer zu langsamen Bewegung der Umgebung. Wir sehen es am Schritt des Kindes. Wenn das Kind in einer Umgebung war, die hastet, in der alles mit übermäßiger Schnelligkeit verläuft, in der die Eindrücke fortwährend wechseln, so tritt das Kind mit leisem Schritt auf. Es prägt sich die Art und Weise, wie das Kind seine Umgebung aufnimmt, bis zum Schritt, bis zum Schreiten, in seiner physischen Organisation aus. Wenn das Kind in einer Umgebung ist, die ihm nicht genügende Anregung gibt, die es fortwährend zur Langeweile treibt, so sehen wir umgekehrt, wie das Kind mit einem viel zu schweren Tritt im späteren Leben durch die Welt geht. Ich erwähne diese Beispiele, weil sie besonders frappant sind, und weil sie zeigen, wie die Menschenbeobachtung sich verfeinern kann. Man sieht aus diesem Beispiel, was wir dem Kinde mitgeben können, wenn wir es in der richtigen Weise im ersten Lebensalter beobachten können. Denn in diesem ersten Lebensalter des Menschen ist das Kind dasjenige, was ich nennen möchte ein nachahmendes Wesen für seine ganze Umgebung, ein nachahmendes Wesen auch in bezug auf das, was es tun soll im Seelischen, auch im Moralischen. Ich möchte auch dafür ein Beispiel anführen.
Wer im Leben mit solchen Dingen viel zu tun gehabt hat, kann ja solche Dinge erfahren. Zu mir kam zum Beispiel einmal ein Vater, der sagte: Unser Junge war bisher immer ein braves Kind, hat alles das getan, was unser moralisches Wohlgefallen hervorgerufen hat; jetzt hat er Geld gestohlen! - Nun, wer die menschliche Wesenheit wirklich erkennt, der stellt in einem solchen Falle die folgende Frage: Ja, woher hat das Kind das Geld genommen? — Es wird einem gesagt: Aus dem Schranke. - Wer nimmt tagtäglich — so frägt man weiter — Geld aus dem Schrank? — Die Mutter! — Das Kind hat eben Tag für Tag gesehen, daß die Mutter Geld genommen hat aus dem Schrank. Das Kind ist ein nachahmendes Wesen, ist als seelischer Sinnesorganismus ganz der Umwelt hingegeben, tut, indem es sein eigenes Wesen in Bewegung bringt, dasselbe, was es in seiner Umgebung sieht. Das Kind richtet sich gar nicht nach Ermahnungen in dem ersten Lebensalter, es richtet sich nicht nach Geboten und Verboten — die haften nicht stark in seiner Seele —, das Kind richtet sich lediglich nach dem, was es in seiner Umgebung sieht. Nur sieht es viel, viel genauer als der Erwachsene, wenn es auch das Gesehene sich nicht zum Bewußtsein bringt. Und es prägt seinem Organismus das ein, was es in der Umgebung schaut. Der ganze Organismus wird ein Abbild dessen, was das Kind in der Umgebung schaut.
In unserer heutigen Erkenntnis überschätzen wir das, was wir die Vererbung nennen, gar sehr. Man redet, wenn man die Eigenschaften des Menschen im späteren Leben sieht, davon, daß er das meiste vererbt hätte auf dem Wege eben des rein physischen Übertragens durch die Generationen. Wer ein wirklicher Menschenkenner ist, sieht aber, wie sich. die Muskeln des Kindes herausbilden nach den Eindrücken seiner Umgebung, je nachdem wir es sanft und milde, mit Liebe, oder in sonstiger Weise behandeln, wie sich Atmung und Blutzirkulation richten nach den Gefühlen, die das Kind erlebt. Erlebt das Kind es oft, daß irgendein Mensch seiner Umgebung in Liebe sich ihm naht, so daß er aus einem instinktiven Miterleben mit dem Rinde das Tempo einschlägt, das die innere Wesenheit des Kindes fordert, so bekommt das Kind in bezug auf die feinere Organisation einen gesunden Atmungsapparat. Fragen Sie, woher die Anlagen für einen brauchbaren physischen Organismus beim erwachsenen Menschen kommen, dann schauen Sie zur Beantwortung dieser Frage hin auf das, was auf das Kind, das ein einziges großes Sinnesorgan ist, aus der Umgebung heraus gewirkt hat, was aus den Worten, was aus den Gesten, was aus dem ganzen Verhalten der Umgebung des Kindes in die Muskeln, in die Blutzirkulation, in die Atmung hineingegangen ist. Sie werden sehen, daß das Kind nicht nur ein Nachahmer ist in bezug auf das Sprechenlernen, das ja ganz auf Nachahmung beruht — wobei es ja auch im Physischen seine Sprachorganisation erst ausgestaltet und stärkt -, sondern daß das Kind in seinem ganzen Organismus, und zwar in der feineren Gliederung dieses Organismus, gerade im Physischen ein Abdruck dessen ist, was wir in seiner Umgebung vollbringen.
Und so können wir sagen: Wie der Mensch bis ins höchste Alter durchs Leben schreitet, indem er seinen physischen Organismus in starker oder schwacher Weise ausgebildet hat, inwiefern sich der Mensch auf seinen physischen Organismus verlassen kann, das hat er zu danken — oder auch nicht zu danken - den Eindrücken, welche die Umgebung auf das ganz kleine Kind zu machen versteht.
Das, was ich Ihnen jetzt gesagt habe in bezug auf den werdenden Menschen als ein nachahmendes Wesen, erstreckt sich auf das erste Lebensalter des Kindes, das sich einer wirklichen Menschenerkenntnis zeigt als das von der Geburt bis zum Zahnwechsel, bis ungefähr zum siebenten Jahre. In diesem siebenten Jahre ändert sich für das Kind mehr, als man gewöhnlich meint. Was dann in der Entwickelung des Kindes eintritt und was man durchschauen muß als Grundlage für eine wahre Erziehungspraxis und Erziehungskunst, das will ich dann im zweiten Teil des Vortrags erläutern, nachdem der erste Teil übersetzt sein wird.
Ungefähr um das siebente Jahr herum tritt mit dem Zahnwechsel nicht nur dieses physische Symptom für eine Umwandlung der physischen Menschennatur auf, sondern es tritt im Kinde auch eine vollständige Umwandlung des seelischen Wesens ein. Wenn das Kind bis zum Zahnwechsel hin im wesentlichen ein nachahmendes Wesen ist, und es in seiner Natur liegt, darauf angewiesen zu sein, seinen physischen Organismus unter den Kräften der Nachahmung auszubilden, so beginnt ungefähr um das siebente Jahr, mit dem Zahnwechsel, für das Kind die Norwendigkeit, an seine Umgebung nun nicht mehr physisch hingegeben zu sein, sondern seelisch hingegeben sein zu können. Wenn alles, was in der Umgebung des Kindes bis zum Zahnwechsel hin sich findet, ich möchte sagen, in die Tiefen des kindlichen Wesens eindringt, so dringt in das Kind für die zweite Lebensepoche, vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, dasjenige ein, was gebaut ist auf die selbstverständliche Autorität derer, die erziehen oder unterrichten. Diese selbstverständliche Autorität drückt sich darin aus, daß das Kind nicht etwa irgendwie aus seiner Natur heraus lernen möchte dasjenige, was ihm entgegengebracht wird an Künsten der Erwachsenen, an Lesen und Schreiben und dergleichen. Es ist ein unermeßlich großer pädagogischer Irrtum, wenn man glaubt, daß das Kind überhaupt den geringsten Drang hat, diejenigen Dinge sich anzueignen, welche Verständigungsmittel, Offenbarungsmittel für das, was Sie wissen, also für den Erwachsenen, sind! Alles, was im Kinde wirklich entwickelnd wirkt, das ist das, was aus dem liebevollen Hingegebensein an die selbstverständliche Autorität hervorgeht. Das Kind lernt die Dinge, wenn es sie lernt, nicht aus irgendeinem Grunde, der im Unterricht ist; das Kind lernt, weil es sieht, daß der Erwachsene sie kennt und handhabt, weil es von dem Erwachsenen, der seine selbstverständliche Erzieherautorität ist, hört: Das ist das, was man als Richtiges tun soll und so weiter. Das geht bis in die Moralgrundsätze hinein.
Ich konnte anführen, wie bis zum Zahnwechsel auch das Moralische vom Kinde durch Nachahmung aufgenommen werden muß. Vom siebenten bis ungefähr vierzehnten Jahr, vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife muß alles durch die liebevolle Hingabe an die selbstverständliche Autorität aufgenommen werden. Nicht irgendwie intellektualistisch dürfen wir dem Kinde beikommen mit einem Gebote: das ist gut oder das ist böse, sondern das Kind muß in der Empfindung heranwachsen, das für gut zu finden, was ihm die selbstverständliche Autorität als gut offenbart. Und es muß an demjenigen Mißfallen haben als an dem Bösen, was ihm die selbstverständliche Autorität als solches hinstellt. Keine anderen Gründe für das Gefallen oder Mißfallen am Guten oder Bösen dürfen sich für das Kind ergeben, als die sind, welche die neben ihm stehende Autorität ihm für das Gute oder Böse offenbart. Nicht weil ihm die Sache an sich nach dem Intellekt gut oder böse erscheint, sondern weil der Erzieher es so findet. Das ist das, worauf es bei einem wirklichen, wahren Erziehen ankommen muß. Worauf es ankommt, das ist, daß alles Moralische, auch alles Religiöse bei dem Kind vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife durch den Menschen herankommen muß. Das menschliche Verhältnis des Lehrers, des Erziehers, das ist es, worauf alles ankommen muß. Was wir glauben dem Kinde beizubringen, indem wir an seine Urteilskraft appellieren, das bringen wir ihm so bei, daß es eigentlich vieles im Kinde innerlich ertötet. Das Kind ist zwar jetzt nicht mehr ganz Sinnesorgan, aber es hat, obwohl es seine Sinnesorgane an die Oberfläche des Körpers bereits verlegte, seine ganze Seele drinnen. Und es bringt nichts heraus aus dem Intellektualistischen, durch welches die Sinne irgendwie organisch geregelt, gesetzmäßig gemacht werden, sondern es kann gerade dann sich an die selbstverständliche Autorität der Erzieherpersönlichkeit hingeben, wenn ihm alles im beseelten Bilde entgegentritt.
Aber das fordert von uns, daß wir die Erziehung zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife durch und durch künstlerisch gestalten, überall vom Künstlerischen ausgehen. Bringen wir an das Kind die Buchstaben heran, durch die es lesen lernen soll, schreiben lernen soll, so sind diese Buchstabenformen heute, in unserer gegenwärtigen Zivilisation solche, zu denen das Kind gar kein Verhältnis, gar keine Beziehungen hat. Wir wissen ja, daß diese Buchstabenformen ausgegangen sind in gewissen Zivilisationen von der bildnerischen Nachahmung äußerer Vorgänge und Dinge selber; von der Bilderschrift ist die Welt ausgegangen. Indem wir die Schrift an das Kind heranbringen, müssen wir auch wiederum von dem Bilde ausgehen. Wir befolgen daher in Stuttgart, in der Waldorfschul-Erziehungskunst dies, daß wir überhaupt nicht mit den Buchstaben als solchen, sondern daß wir künstlerisch mit dem Mal- und Zeichenunterricht beginnen. Das ist schwierig bei dem Kinde, das mit sechs oder sieben Jahren die Schule betritt; aber die Schwierigkeit wird überwunden werden. Und sie wird überwunden, wenn wir in der richtigen Weise mit unserer Autorität neben dem Kinde so stehen, daß das Kind tatsächlich in sich das Gefühl bekommt: das, was der Erzieher aus der Farbe, aus der Form heraus bildet, das will ich auch nachmachen, denn ich will so werden wie er. - Auf diesem Umwege muß alles erlernt werden. Das kann aber nur erlernt werden, wenn nicht nur äußerlich, sondern auch innerlich tatsächlich ein Verhältnis zwischen dem Lehrer und dem Schüler ist, welches über alles, was an Unterricht und Erziehung gegeben wird, das Künstlerische ausgießt. Denn zwischen dem Erziehenden und dem Kinde wirken eben Imponderabilien. Da wirkt nicht nur das, was man sich an Geschicklichkeit in der Erziehung angeeignet hat und dergleichen, da wirkt vor allen Dingen Gesinnung, da wirkt gefühlsmäßige Empfindung, da wirkt die ganze Seelenverfassung des Lehrers. Sie aber kann eine entsprechende Richtung bekommen, wenn man an das Geistige der Welt als Lehrer auch heranzugehen vermag.
Ich will auch da wieder ein Beispiel gebrauchen, um das, was ich meine, zu charakterisieren, ein Beispiel, das ich besonders gern gebrauche. Nehmen wir an, wir wollen das Kind im Moralisch-Religiösen anregen. Es wird das ungefähr, in der richtigen Art, in das neunte, zehnte Lebensjahr fallen. Man kann bei der Erziehung, die ich meine, durchaus von der Entwickelung des Kindes ablesen, was man ihm in jedem Jahre, ja Monate, beizubringen hat. Ich will ihm, sagen wir, im neunten, zehnten Lebensjahre beibringen eine Vorstellung von der Unsterblichkeit der Menschenseele. Ich kann intellektualistisch darüber herumreden, das wird auf das Kind nicht nur ohne Eindruck bleiben, es wird sogar das Kind seelisch verkümmern; denn es mischt sich, wenn ich intellektualistisch über das Moralisch-Religiöse vor dem Kinde doziere, nichts Seelisches hinein! Das Seelische beruht auf Imponderabilien, die zwischen dem Lehrer und dem Kinde wirken müssen. Ich kann dem Kinde bildhaft, im Symbolum, im Bilde künstlerisch beibringen, was es erleben soll über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Ich kann ihm sagen: Sieh dir die Schmetterlingspuppe an, der Schmetterling durchbricht diese Puppe, fliegt aus ihr aus, bewegt sich dann im Sonnenschein. — So ist es mit der Menschenseele: sie ist im menschlichen Organismus wie der Schmetterling in der Puppe; sie verläßt, wenn der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes tritt, den Organismus und bewegt sich fortan in der geistigen Welt.
Nun kann man in einer zweifachen Weise das dem Kinde beibringen wollen. Man kann als Lehrer sich selbstverständlich sehr gescheit fühlen und sich sagen: Ich bin gescheit, das Kind ist dumm; das Kind kann nicht verstehen, was ich durch meine Gescheitheit mir zurechtlege über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Ich forme es ihm in ein Bild, ich bemühe mich, dieses Bild zu formen.
Ja, wenn ich das Bild für das Kind nur zurechtrücke und mich selber über das Bild ungeheuer erhaben fühle, so wird das auf das Kind einen Eindruck machen, der bald wieder vorübergeht, der durchaus auch innerlich etwas verdorrt in dem Kinde. Aber ich kann in einer anderen Weise mich zum Kinde stellen durch meine Gemütsempfindung, kann mir sagen: Ich glaube selbst an dieses Bild. Dieses Bild fabriziere ich nicht; die göttlich-geistigen Mächte stellen selber in die Natur hinein die Schmetterlingspuppe und den ausflatternden Schmetterling, um vor mich ein Bild hinzustellen, ein reales Bild, das durch die Natur selber hineingestellt ist in die Welt für das, was ich begreifen soll als Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele tritt mir auf einer einfacheren, primitiveren Stufe, in dem auskriechenden Schmetterling entgegen. Gott selber hat mir das zeigen wollen an dem auskriechenden Schmetterling. — Erst wenn ich in dieser Weise meinen Bildern gegenüber selbst Gläubigkeit entwickeln kann, dann spielt sich dieses eigentümliche, unsichtbare Übersinnliche zwischen mir und dem Kinde ab. Und wenn ich meine eigene Auffassung mit solcher Seelenvertiefung ausbilde und vor das Kind hinstelle, dann bleibt dieses Bild etwas, was für das ganze Leben in dem Kinde wurzelt und sich weiter entwickelt. Was wir erreichen, wenn wir alles umsetzen können in bildhaften Unterricht zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife, das ist, daß wir dem Kinde nicht etwa fertige Begriffe beibringen, an denen es festhalten soll, die möglichst genau sein sollen. Wenn wir dem Kinde fertige Begriffe beibringen, so ist es, wie wenn wir seine Hand einspannen wollten in eine Maschine, so daß es sich nicht frei entwickeln kann. Worum es sich handelt, ist, daß wir dem Kinde innerlich bewegliche Begriffe beibringen, solche Begriffe, die wachsen wie unsere Glieder, so daß dasjenige, was wir vor dem Kinde entwickeln, in neuen Jahrzehnten, im achtzehnten, im zwanzigsten, im vierzigsten Jahre seines Lebens etwas ganz anderes geworden sein kann.
Diese Dinge kann aber nur der beurteilen — und bei ihm geht es in eine selbstverständliche Erziehungskunst über —, der nicht nur in der Gegenwart das Kind anschaut und frägt, was es für Bedürfnisse, was es für Entwickelungskräfte hat, sondern der das ganze menschliche Leben überschauen kann. Da möchte ich Ihnen ein Beispiel geben. Nehmen wir an, wir bringen es beim Kinde dahin, daß wir zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife jene innere Hingabe an den Erzieher herausbekommen. Ich möchte durch ein Beispiel die Stärke, die da eintreten muß, veranschaulichen. Wer solche Dinge durchschaut, der weiß, welches Glück seines Lebens es bis in die spätesten Jahre ist, wenn er in der Kindheit etwa in der Lage war, von seiner Umgebung zu hören von einem sehr verehrten Verwandten, den er bisher noch nicht gesehen hat. Er darf ihn eines Tages besuchen. Er geht mit scheuer Ehrfurcht, nach alldem, was er gehört hat, nach dem ganzen Bilde, das ihm entworfen worden ist, den Gang zu diesem Verwandten. Mit scheuer Ehrfurcht sieht er, wie die Türe geöffnet wird. Es ist ein Ungeheures um ein solches Hinschauen zu etwas Verehrungswürdigem. Wenn man so hat verehren können, so zu einem Menschen hat hinschauen können, so ist das etwas, was sich tief einwurzelt in die menschliche Seele, und wovon man im spätesten Lebensalter noch die Früchte haben kann! So ist es aber mit allem, was an beweglichen, lebendigen Begriffen an das Kind herangebracht wird, nicht in es hineingepreßt wird. Wer das bei einem Kinde erreicht, daß das Kind in scheuer Ehrfurcht wirklich zu dem Erzieher hinaufschaut als der selbstverständlichen Autorität, der erzeugt etwas in dem Kinde für das späteste Lebensalter, das ich ausdrücken möchte in dem Folgenden: Wir wissen, es gibt Leute, welche, wenn sie ein gewisses Lebensalter erreicht haben, für die Umgebung, in der sie sich aufhalten, eine Wohltat sind, deren Worte gar nicht viele zu sein brauchen; sie wirken wie segnend, ihre Worte. Es ist etwas, das die Stimme durchdringt, es ist nicht der Inhalt der Worte, Es ist ein Segen für die Menschen, in der Zeit der Kindheit in die Nähe solcher Menschen zu kommen. Wenn wir zurückgehen bei solch einem Fünfzig-, Sechzigjährigen und schauen, was ihm im kindlichen Leben zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife gegeben worden ist, was er gelernt hat, so kommen wir darauf, daß er verehren gelernt hat, ein Verehren im Moralischen, das ihn in der richtigen Weise aufschauen lehrte, religiös, zu den höheren Mächten der Welt; ein Mensch, der in der richtigen Weise, wenn ich so sagen darf, beten lernte. Wer in der richtigen Weise beten gelernt hat, bei dem wandelt sich das, was er innerlich an dem Verehren lernte, im Alter in segnende Kräfte, in die Kräfte, durch die er eine Wohltat für seine Umgebung sein kann. Und ich möchte sagen, um es möglichst bildlich auszudrücken: Derjenige, der nie gelernt hat die Hände zu falten als Kind, um zu beten, der kann auch niemals in seinem Leben die Kraft entwickeln, die Hände zum Segnen auszubreiten.
Darum handelt es sich, daß wir uns nicht einige abstrakt angeeignete Ideen bilden und in das Kind hineinstopfen, sondern daß wir wissen, wie wir mit dem Kinde verfahren müssen, wenn wir in seine Seele etwas hineinbilden wollen, das für das ganze Leben von fruchtbringender Bedeutung ist. Und so werden wir nicht das abstrakte Lesen und Schreiben unmittelbar an das Kind heranbringen, sondern mit dem Schreiben beginnen, aber aus dem Künstlerischen heraus, indem wir aus dem Bild heraus alles das entstehen lassen, was an abstrakten Buchstaben in der Welt existiert. Indem wir zunächst das Kind so schreiben lehren, entsprechen wir dadurch seinen Bedürfnissen, nicht nur seine Beobachtung hinzuwenden, sondern seinen ganzen Menschen, nicht nur den Kopf. Wir werden zunächst das Kind schreiben lehren; denn wenn das Kind das Schreiben auf diese Weise aufnimmt, daß es aus dem Bilde heraus mit dem ganzen Menschen beteiligt ist, nicht bloß mit dem Kopf, geben wir ihm das Richtige. Hat es so schreiben gelernt, dann kann es das Lesen lernen.
Wer zu stark befangen ist im heutigen Schulwesen, der wird sagen: Ja, aber da lernt das Kind langsamer lesen und schreiben, als es dies bisher gelernt hat. — Aber es handelt sich darum, ob dasjenige Tempo, das heute eingehalten ist, richtig ist! Im Grunde genommen ist es überhaupt nur richtig, wenn das Kind erst nach dem achten Jahre zu dem Lesen herangezogen wird! So daß das alles aus dem Bildnerischen, Künstlerischen heraus entwickelt wird.
Derjenige, der ein Menschenkenner geworden ist durch wirkliche Seelen- und Geistesanschauung des Menschen, wird in feinster Weise den Menschen beobachten können, und dann wird aus der Beobachtung die erzieherische Kunst fließen. Nehmen wir an, wir haben ein Kind, das zu stark mit seinen Beinen auf die Erde auftritt; es rührt das davon her, daß in unrichtiger Weise auf das Kind seelisch eingewirkt worden ist vor dem Zahnwechsel. Aber wir können noch manches gut machen, indem wir von innen heraus, durch die Bilder, die wir anregen, Künstlerisches heranbringen und das, was der Mensch gestaltet hat bis zum Zahnwechsel, nach dem Zahnwechsel beleben lassen. Daher wird der, welcher ein wirklicher Menschenkenner ist, ein Kind, das einen stark auftretenden Schritt hat, vorzugsweise damit beschäftigen, daß er es künstlerisch heranzieht zum Malerischen, Zeichnerischen. Dagegen ein Kind, das einen zu leichten, tänzelnden Schritt hat: die ganze spätere Charakterbildung, ungeheuer tiefes Moralisches hängt davon ab, daß wir ein solches Kind mehr zum Musikalischen anregen. Und so können wir in jedem einzelnen Fall sagen, wenn wir hineinschauen können in den Menschen, wie wir das heranbringen sollen, was wir ins Bild gießen.
Wir können sagen: Bis zum Zahnwechsel hin wird das Kind in seiner Eltern- und Familienumgebung seine nächste, naturgemäße Umgebung haben. Aber wir müssen nachkommen durch Kinderschulen, Spielschulen. Wir machen nur das Richtige durch das, was wir als Spielen, als kindliche Betätigung entwickeln sollen, wenn wir wissen, wie das in das Kind, in den physischen Organismus hineingeht. Man soll sich nur vorstellen, wie ein Kind, das zum Beispiel eine fertige Puppe bekommt, eine sogenannte recht «schöne» Puppe, die sogar ein schön gemaltes Antlitz hat, also möglichst «fertig» ist, wie ein solches Kind - diese Dinge lassen sich nicht durch die grobe Anatomie beobachten — ein schwerflüssiges Blut bekommt, wie seine physische Organisation gestört wird. Wir wissen gar nicht, wie schwer wir da sündigen, wie das auf das Kind wirkt! Stellen wir ihm aus ein paar Lappen selber die Puppe zusammen, indem wir sie neben dem Kinde machen, malen wir auf die Puppenlappen die Augen drauf, so daß das Kind dies in der Beweglichkeit, im Entstehen vor sich hat, dann nimmt das Kind das in die Beweglichkeit seines Organismus auf; es geht über in sein Blut, in sein Atmungssystem.
Haben wir zum Beispiel ein melancholisches Kind vor uns; wer ohne jede Seelenanschauung, äußerlich das Kind nur betrachtet, wird sagen: ein melancholisches Kind, innerlich schwarz — wir müssen recht lebhafte Farben in seine Umgebung bringen, müssen seine Spiele möglichst rot und gelb machen, müssen ihm Kleider anziehen, die möglichst hell sind, damit das Kind durch die hellen Farben aufwacht, aufgeweckt wird. - Nein, das wird es nicht! Denn, sehen Sie, das erzielt nur einen innerlichen Schock in dem Kinde, muß geradezu alle Lebenskräfte in die entgegengesetzte Richtung treiben. Gerade blaue oder blauviolette Farben und Spielgegenstände müssen wir in die Nähe eines Kindes bringen, das ein melancholisches, in sich verschlossenes Kind ist; während wir das Kind, das innerlich tätig ist, anregen dadurch, daß wir Hellfarbiges in seine Umgebung bringen. Dadurch stellt es seinen eigenen Organismus mit der Umgebung in eine Harmonie hinein, und es gesundet für das, was vielleicht in ihm zu flatterhaft ist, zu nervös ist, gerade an der Beweglichkeit und dem Hellen in der Umgebung.
So kann man bis ins einzelnste hinein, bis in die unmittelbare Hilfe der Praxis, das, was neben dem Kinde erzieherisch, unterrichtlich zu tun ist, aus wirklicher Menschenerkenntnis heraus gewinnen. Wenn man in dieser Weise erzieht, wird man einsehen, daß es im Grunde genommen zwar den Einbildungen entsprechen kann, die wir uns machen darüber, was das Kind in diesem oder jenem Alter lernen soll, was wir in es hineinpfropfen sollen, wie wir es betätigen sollen. Derjenige aber, der weiß, daß das Kind dennoch aus seiner Umgebung nur das nehmen kann, was in seinem Organismus veranlagt ist, der wird sich so sagen: Nehmen wir an, ein Kind ist dazu veranlagt, nicht fortdauernd in robuster Art sich in der Außenwelt zu betätigen, sondern etwas auch im Kleinen zu arbeiten, ich möchte sagen, ins Künstlerische hinüber zu arbeiten. Wenn man dieses Kind — weil man selber eigensinnig auf das aus ist — robust äußerlich arbeiten läßt, dann verkümmern gerade die Anlagen, welche in dem Kinde sind für irgendeine feinere Arbeit; und diejenigen Anlagen, die man ausbilden möchte, weil man sich selber einbildet, daß sie allgemein menschliche sind, weil man sie bei jedem Menschen ausbilden muß, verkümmern erst recht. Das Kind kümmert sich nicht darum; es führt die Arbeit zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife aus, aber es bleibt nichts in ihm, es wächst nichts heran in dem Kinde von dem, was in dieser Weise in es hineingepfropft wird. Überall kommt es bei dem Erziehungsprinzip, um das es sich hier handelt, darauf an, daß der Erziehende einen feinen Sinn hat, was im Kinde vorhanden ist, und daß er aus dem, was er im Kinde körperlich, seelisch, geistig beobachtet, in jedem Augenblick das Richtige aus seinem Lehrinstinkte heraus zu tun weiß.
Auf diese Weise wird der Lehrer eigentlich die Pädagogik für das Kind mit seinem Heranwachsen beobachten können. In der Waldorfschul-Pädagogik ist der Lehrplan vom Kinde abgelesen. Alles, was nicht nur von Jahr zu Jahr, was von Monat zu Monat, von Woche zu Woche getrieben werden muß, ist vom Kinde abzulesen, damit dem Kinde das entgegengebracht werden kann, was es durch seine innere Natur fordert. Der Lehrberuf ist derjenige, der die größte Selbstlosigkeit fordert, der darum gar nicht duldet, daß man irgendwie ein vorgefaßtes Programm hat, der ganz und gar darauf aus sein muß, das Kind so zu behandeln, daß man durch das Verhältnis, das man zu dem Kinde hat, indem man neben ihm steht, im Grunde genommen nur die Gelegenheit herbeiführt, daß sich das Kind selbst entwickeln kann.
Das wird man vom siebenten bis vierzehnten Jahr, gerade im elementarschulpflichtigen Alter am besten können, wenn man vollständig darauf verzichtet, an den Intellekt zu appellieren, sondern wenn man alles in das Künstlerische leitet. So läßt sich das Physische, wie auch das Seelische, wie auch das, was schon das Geistige ausbilden soll, in diesem Alter ins Bild kleiden. Wir sollen namentlich das Moralische ins Bild kleiden, wenn das Kind im neunten, zehnten Lebensjahre ist. Wir sollen nicht moralische Gebote geben, nicht sagen: Das ist gut oder das ist böse —, sondern vor das Kind hinstellen, an das Kind heranbringen gute Menschen, wodurch es eine Sympathie für das Gute gewinnen kann. Oder vor es hinstellen böse Menschen, wodurch es gegenüber dem Bösen eine Antipathie gewinnen kann. Wir können durch das Bild in seinem Gemüte die moralische Wesenheit erwecken.
Das sind allerdings nur Andeutungen. Ich habe sie geben wollen für das zweite Lebensalter des Menschen. Wie sich dann das Ganze zu einer grundlegenden Erziehung, nicht einer Erziehung bloß für den Augenblick des Kindesalters, sondern für das ganze menschliche Leben ergibt, das will ich im dritten, ganz kurzen Teil meines Vortrages sagen, nachdem der zweite Teil übersetzt sein wird.
Inwiefern durch die hier geschilderte Erziehungskunst von dem kindlichen Lebensalter an auf das ganze Leben des Menschen, von der Geburt bis zum Tode, die richtige Wirkung erzielt sein soll, das werden Sie am besten bemerken können, an dem einzelnen Fall der Erziehung, durch die sogenannte eurythmische Kunst. Das, was als eurythmische Kunst in diesen Tagen auch in öffentlichen Vorstellungen in London gezeigt worden ist, ist etwas, was nun auch eine pädagogischdidaktische Seite hat.
Eurythmische Kunst besteht darinnen, daß man tatsächlich aus der Tiefe der Menschennatur Bewegungen des einzelnen Menschen oder von Menschengruppen so hervorruft, daß alles, was an solchen Bewegungen auftritt, in derselben Weise gesetzmäßig aus dem menschlichen Organismus fließt wie die menschliche Lautsprache oder der Gesang. In dieser eurythmischen Kunst ist auch jede einzelne Geste, jede einzelne mimische Offenbarung nichts irgendwie Willkürliches, sondern man hat in ihr eine wirkliche, sichtbare Sprache vorliegen, so daß eurythmisch, das heißt sichtbar ebenso gesungen werden kann durch gewisse Bewegungen, wie gesprochen werden kann. Was in der Lautsprache zurückgehalten wird an Bewegungsmöglichkeit des ganzen Menschen, und was nur übergeht in Metamorphose in den hörbaren Laut, das wird in der eurythmischen Kunst als eine sichtbare Sprache ausgestaltet.
Nun haben wir in der Waldorfschule diese Eurythmie eingeführt von der untersten Volksschulklasse bis zu der höchsten. Und es zeigt sich, daß tatsächlich das Kind sich hineinstellt in diese sichtbare Sprache, wo ebenso, wie ein Laut irgend etwas bedeutet als seelischer Ausdruck in der hörbaren Sprache, so jede Finger-, jede Handbewegung, jede Bewegung des ganzen Leibes eben ein wirklicher Sprachlaut ist, nur in Sichtbarkeit. Man sieht, daß das Kind im Alter des Zahnwechsels und noch darüber hinaus, bis zur Geschlechtsreife, sich ebenso selbstverständlich in diese Sprache hineinlebt, wie es sich als ganz kleines Kind in die Lautsprache hineingefunden hat. Es zeigt sich, daß sein ganzer Organismus, nach Leib, Seele und Geist - denn eurythmische Kunst ist zugleich geistig-seelisches Turnen, ist geistig-seelische Gymnastik — mit derselben Selbstverständlichkeit sich hineinfindet in diese eurythmische Sprache, wie es sich in die Lautsprache hineingelebt hat; daß es empfindet, daß ihm damit etwas gegeben wird, was aus seinem ganzen Organismus unmittelbar folgt. Damit aber ist neben die Gymnastik, die ihr Wesen ableitet mehr von der Beobachtung des äußeren physischen Leibes, in der Eurythmie durch die Beobachtung des Geistig-Seelischen etwas hingestellt, wo der Mensch in jeder Bewegung sich erfühlt nicht nur als Leib, als durchseelter Leib, sondern als durchgeistigte Seele im von der Seele gestalteten Leib. Wiederum: was der Mensch erlebt als eurythmische Kunst, wirkt einerseits in einer ungeheuer lebendigen Weise auf all das, was in ihm als Anlagen sind, und wirkt auf der anderen Seite ebenso in seiner Fruchtbarkeit, in seiner Wirksamkeit auf das ganze Leben.
Sie können das Kind äußere Gymnastik noch so gut machen lassen, wenn diese Gymnastik nur nach Regeln des Körpers gemacht ist, so werden Sie durch das Treiben der Gymnastik das Kind nicht schützen, sagen wir, im späteren Alter vor allerlei Stoffwechselkrankheiten, Rheumatismen selbst, also Krankheiten, die später zu Stoffwechselkrankheiten werden. Denn, was man aus der Gymnastik herausholt, das verdichtet eher den physischen Leib. Aber das, was Sie herausholen, indem Sie jede einzelne Bewegung aus dem Geist und der Seele herausholen, das macht Geist und Seele für das ganze Leben zum Beherrscher des Seelischen, des Physischen. Sie verhindern durch bloße äußerliche Gymnastik den sechzigjährigen Leib nicht daran, brüchig zu werden. Sie verhindern aber, wenn Sie das Kind in der Weise erziehen, daß Sie seine Bewegungen aus der Seele heraus als Gymnastik machen lassen, Sie verhindern es, daß der Körper brüchig wird in seinem sechzigsten Jahre, wenn er es auch sonst geworden wäre, wenn Sie also bildlichen Unterricht erteilen zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife, daß Sie dieses Bild, das sonst die Seele beschäftigt, übertreten lassen geistig-seelisch in den Körper. Also diese bildhafte Sprache ist nichts anderes als durchseelte, durchgeistigte Gymnastik. Das aber zeigt Ihnen, daß diese durchseelte und durchgeistigte Gymnastik darauf ausgeht, gleichmäßig nach Leib, Seele und Geist das Kind zu entwickeln, damit das, was man veranlagt im kindlichen Lebensalter, Früchte trägt durch das ganze Alter hindurch. Das können wir nur, wenn wir uns so fühlen wie der Gärtner, der eine Pflanze zu pflegen hat: er will nicht erwa eingreifen in die Säftebewegung, künstlich etwas einpfropfen, er führt äußerlich die Gelegenheit herbei, so daß die Pflanze sich entwickeln kann; er hat eine selbstverständliche innere Scheu, in dieses innere Wachstum der Pflanze hineinzugreifen. Diese ehrfürchtige Scheu müssen wir haben vor dem, was im Kinde sich ins Leben hinein entwickeln will. So werden wir nicht zum Beispiel in einseitiger Weise immer darauf sehen, daß wir dem Kinde etwas beibringen. Das Autoritätsprinzip, wie ich es angeführt habe, das muß im tiefsten Sinne seelisch in das Kind hinüberwalten. Und es muß so sein, daß das Kind die Möglichkeit hat, Dinge in sich aufzunehmen, die es noch nicht intellektuell durchschauen kann, sondern aufnimmt, weil es den Lehrer liebt. Dann nehmen wir dem Kinde nicht die Möglichkeit in späterer Zeit, ein Erleben zu haben, das es sonst nicht hat. Wenn ich alles schon als Kind begriffen habe, dann habe ich etwa folgendes Erlebnis nicht: Nehmen wir an, in meinem fünfunddreißigsten Jahre käme etwas, das sich mir so darbietet, daß ich diese oder jene Sache von einer geliebten Lehrerpersönlichkeit, von einer geliebten Autorität, auf Autorität hin, auf den liebenden Glauben hin dazumal angenommen habe -, jetzt bin ich reifer, jetzt dämmert mir ein ganz neues Verständnis dafür auf! Dieses Faktum, daß man im gereiften Alter zurückkommen kann auf etwas, das man früher aufgenommen hat, noch nicht vollkommen durchschaut hat, jetzt aber in der Reife belebt, das gibt eine innere Befriedigung, das gibt eine Erkraftung des Willens, die wir dem Menschen nicht nehmen dürfen, wenn wir vor seiner Freiheit die nötige Achtung haben und ihn als freies Wesen erziehen wollen. Als freies Wesen den Menschen zu erziehen, das liegt dem hier gemeinten Erziehungsprinzip zugrunde. Deshalb sollen wir auch nicht in das Kind hineinpflanzen eine Entwickelung des Willens durch intellektuell moralische Urteile. Wir sollen uns klar sein, daß wenn wir in dem kindlichen Gemüt ungefähr zwischen dem siebenten und vierzehnten Jahr moralische Anschauungen entwickeln, indem das Gemüt Sympathie und Antipathie entwickelt, das Kind dann, wenn es geschlechtsreif geworden ist und dem Leben gegenübersteht, das intellektuell-moralische Gefühl und das, was es will, durchschaut, daß dasjenige, was den Willen durchzieht, was aus dem Willen heraus das früher entwickelte ästhetische Gefühl an dem Moralischen belebt, daß das, indem es aus der Freiheit am Leben sich entzündet, gerade dem Menschen Stärke, innere Sicherheit gibt.
Sehen Sie, wer in der hier gemeinten Weise die richtige Erziehungskunst anwenden will, der sieht nicht bloß auf das kindliche Alter, der sieht hin auf den Menschen, auch wenn er ins späteste Lebensalter eingetreten ist. Denn er will, daß das, was er in den Menschen hineinpflanzt, sich wirklich so verhält wie die Blume, die aus den inneren Naturverhältnissen heraus wächst und gedeiht. Wenn wir die Blume einsetzen, können wir nicht wollen, daß sie sich schnell entwickle; sondern wir warten ab, daß sie sich langsam entwickle von der Wurzel, zum Stengel, zum Blatt und zur Blüte und Frucht sich entfalte, und sich am Lichte der Sonne frei entwickelt. Das ist dasjenige, was wir uns vorhalten als Ziel für eine richtige Erziehungskunst. Wir wollen das pflegen im Kinde, was die Wurzel des Lebens ist, wollen es aber so pflegen, daß sich nach und nach, beweglich, das Leben aus demjenigen heraus umgestaltet, physisch, seelisch und geistig, was wir für das Kindheitsalter, für das Jugendalter pflegen. Dann können wir sicher sein, daß wir mit voller Achtung vor der menschlichen Freiheit den Menschen eben als freies Wesen so in die Welt hineinstellen durch unsere Erziehung, daß wirklich dasjenige, was die Wurzel der Erziehung ist, frei sich entwickle - nicht durch unser ihn zum Sklaven machendes Hineinpfropfen —, so daß es sich auch noch im späteren Leben, auch unter den verschiedensten Gegebenheiten, wenn er ein freier Mensch sein will, dann entsprechend entwickeln kann.
Allerdings, diese Erziehungsprinzipien stellen die größte Anforderung an den Lehrer. Das tun sie; aber können wir überhaupt nur voraussetzen, daß das, was zunächst in dieser Welt hier auf Erden das allervollkommenste Wesen ist — der Mensch -, daß das in einfacher Weise behandelt werden kann, ohne daß man mit voller Vertiefung in die Eigenheiten dieses Wesens auch wirklich eindringt? Sollen wir denn nicht glauben, daß gerade dem Menschen gegenüber dasjenige, was wir an ihm tun, etwas wie Verehrung, manches eine Art religiöser Dienst sein muß? Wir müssen das glauben, daß die Erziehungskunst von uns die größte Selbstlosigkeit verlangt, daß wir uns völlig vergessen können und in die Wesenheit des Kindes untertauchen müssen, um schon im Kinde das zu schauen, was dann im erwachsenen Menschen für die Welt gedeihen soll. Selbstlose Umsicht und wirklich der Wille, sich in die menschliche Natur für eine wahre Menschenerkenntnis hinein zu vertiefen, das sind die Grundbedingungen einer wahren Erziehungskunst.
Warum sollten wir es nicht als eine Notwendigkeit anerkennen, uns einer solchen Erziehungskunst hinzugeben, wenn wir uns doch sagen müssen, daß aus dem ganzen Menschenleben heraus, aus dem sie ja auch gewonnen ist, die Erziehung das Edelste ist! Die Erziehung ist das Edelste in allem Menschenleben auf Erden.
Das ist doch der Fortschritt. Derjenige Fortschritt, den wir durch die Erziehung pflegen, der besteht darinnen, daß die uns aus den göttlichen Welten geschenkten jungen Generationen so entwickelt werden durch das, was wir als ältere Generation uns entwickelt haben, daß diese jüngere Generation über uns hinaus einen weiteren Schritt im Menschheitsfortschritt macht. Sollte es nicht als das Richtige jedem Einsichtsvollen erscheinen, daß, indem man so Menschheitsdienst leistet, indem man also das Beste und Schönste der älteren Generation der jüngeren Generation zum Opfer bringt, daß man so auch in der schönsten, in der menschheitswürdigsten Weise Erziehungskunst treibt?
The art of education through knowledge of human nature
It may seem strange that practical educational issues should be discussed from the point of view of a very specific world view - anthroposophical spiritual science. In this case, however, the reason for talking about education comes from educational practice itself.
You have just heard that the art of education of which I will take the liberty of speaking to you this evening is practiced in the Waldorf School. And this Waldorf School has also led to a broader development of the ideas and aims of the world view of education that I represent. A few years ago, when educational issues were, one might say, on everyone's lips, the Stuttgart industrialist Emil Molt wanted to found a school, initially for the children of his industrial establishment. He turned to me to give this school an appropriate pedagogical content and direction. |
At first we were dealing with pupils from a very specific class and also with pupils from a specific society that cultivates a world view: we were dealing with the proletarian children of the industrial Waldorf company and with a number of children from the Anthroposophical Society. But very soon the task of this school expanded. Whereas we started with about one hundred and fifty children in eight classes, today we have eleven classes with over seven hundred children. As a result, in August of this year I was invited to give a series of lectures on the principles of this Waldorf School here in England, in Oxford, after some friends of the anthroposophical world view had already come to the Goetheanum in Dornach at Christmas to hear a series of lectures on this art of education. Out of the Oxford lecture series emerged the Educational Union, which was founded here and which intends to introduce the educational principles of which I have to speak this evening on a wider scale in England as well.
I had to mention these events so that you would not have the impression this evening that we are talking about theoretical arguments, but so that you would realize that we are speaking from a truly practical art of education. I had to do this all the more because I will, of course, only be able to make a few suggestions this evening. The suggestions I will make will be all the more incomplete because the educational principles I am talking about here are not really a program, but a practice. And if it is a practice, one can only ever cite some, I would say, examples from this practice. If you start from a program, it is easier: you cite general propositions, general maxims. This is not possible with the particular peculiarity of the educational principles on which Waldorf education is based. I have already said that we are dealing with a justification of pedagogy and education from a spiritual-scientific view of the world, a view of the world that can lead to a real knowledge of the human being and thus also to a real knowledge of the nature of the child.
If the painter or any other artist wants to practise his art, he must acquire two things. Firstly - let us take the example of the painter - he must acquire a certain gift of observation for form and color. He must be able to create from the essence of color and form. He cannot start from a theoretical knowledge, he can only start from a living inner life in the being of form and color. Only then comes the second thing he has to acquire: the technique itself. Education is understood here by anthroposophical spiritual science not as a science, not as theoretical knowledge, but as a real art, as an art that has to do with the noblest material we have in the world: with the human being himself, with the child, who reveals the deepest mysteries of the world to us in such a wonderful way, by allowing us to see from year to year, one might even say from week to week, how out of the physiognomy, out of the gesture, out of all the other expressions of the child's life, the spiritual, the soul, which is locked deep within the child as a divine dowry from spiritual worlds, emerges. The view of which I speak here assumes that just as it is necessary for the painter to acquire a gift of observation, which becomes activity through his hands, his soul, his spirit, a gift of observation for color and form, so it is necessary for the artist of education that he can follow the whole essence of man as it reveals itself in the child. But one cannot do this if one does not ascend from the observation of that which the ordinary consciousness gives man in the observation of man, if one cannot ascend to a real observation of the soul and spiritual life. And this is precisely what anthroposophical spiritual science wants. What is called knowledge today can actually only deal with what is physical, what speaks to the senses. How do we as human beings today, if we do not ascend to a real knowledge of the spirit, get to know the soul? Actually only by getting to know the expressions, the activities of the soul within ourselves. By striving for self-observation, we get to know our thinking, we get to know our feeling, our will. These are qualities of the soul. We only have the soul itself, I would like to say, through judgment. We see the sensual, we perceive the sensual. We only have the soul by forming the judgment from the qualities of our own inner being that something like a soul underlies us.
Anthroposophical spiritual science, as I mean it here, does not start from this ordinary consciousness, but seeks to develop dormant powers in the human soul in a very systematic way, so that from this arises - please do not be frightened by the expression - a kind of exact clairvoyance, exact clairvoyance. Through this one looks through from the qualities of the soul to the real soul. And one learns to recognize this spiritual through spiritual vision just as one learns to recognize the sensual color through the eye, the sensual sounds through the ears. But the spirit that reigns in the world is actually known to ordinary consciousness only by inference. We can only ever say, if we remain in ordinary consciousness: We see natural phenomena, soul phenomena. We conclude from this that all this is based on something spiritual. Our thoughts are occupied with concluding that the physical is based on a soul, a spiritual. Anthroposophical spiritual science develops dormant powers in the soul, the spiritual sense organs, if I may use the paradoxical expression, through which one can not only open up the spirit, but also experience it for oneself in living thought.
Only then, when one sees the soul, when one can experience the spirit in living thinking, can one have real knowledge of man. Then, through spiritual science, such a living knowledge of man comes about which can penetrate man so that he can see in the growing child in every moment of life how the spiritual, how the soul works in the child. He not only looks at the child, if I may say so, through the senses from the outside, but he sees how the soul expresses itself in the sensual manifestations. For he proceeds from what is not only spiritual revelation, but directly spiritual substance, which can be seen like color by the eyes. It starts from how the spirit works in the child, because it recognizes, because this knowledge provides it with a science that grasps the spirit itself in living thinking.
So this art of education, of which I speak here, proceeds from a living knowledge of man, from a grasp of the becoming in the child at every moment of life. Only when one sees through the human being in this way, I would like to say, the noblest material we can have for an art, the material for an art of education - when one sees through the human being in this way, when one really also works educationally for the human being, then one sees quite different things than one can see with the ordinary consciousness. And then, from such a science, one can give teachers and educators guidance on how they can also train, in direct practical contact with the child, that which can be seen as the soul itself, can be experienced as the spirit itself.
In the child - as living observation shows - the spirit is present to no less an extent than in the adult; but this spirit is locked deep within the child and must first conquer the body. And we get an impression of the wonderful way in which the spirit, which is given to the child as a divine dowry, works in the child's organism when we can see this spirit ourselves before it speaks to us through language, before it can reveal itself to us through intellectual thinking. This gives us an impression of how it cannot be said that the physical nature of man is one thing and the spiritual is another. In the child one sees the physical nature in such a way that directly, much more than can ever be the case with the adult, the spiritual works inwardly on the physical, the spiritual completely saturates the physical. As adults we have spirit in that we need the spirit to think about the world. The child has spirit in that it needs the spirit to shape its own organism like a spiritual sculptor. And much more than one might think, the physical organism of the human being is a creature of that which the spiritual being enclosed in the child performs on this physical organism throughout the entire subsequent life on earth. First of all, allow me to give you some examples so that I am not just speaking in abstract thoughts but in concrete ones.
Whoever only looks at the child externally, with physical science, looks at the child as the dissecting table or ordinary physiology gives us its organization - not a spiritual insight - does not see how all the individual gestures that happen to the child have an effect in the physical organism. Let me say: the child is being shouted at; it is in some kind of activity, it is being shouted at by the adult. It makes a completely different impression on the child when it is shouted at by an adult than when we shout at an adult. When we shout at the child, we have to bear in mind that the child is still organized quite differently from the adult. The adult has his sensory organs on the surface of his organism; he controls what the sensory organs give him with his intellect. He forms the fully developed will from within in relation to the sensory impressions. The child is completely devoted to the outer world. The child is, if I may put it this way - it is not meant figuratively, it is quite real - the child is entirely a sensory organ. I would like to express myself very clearly: Let's look at an infant. When we look at him with external cognition, it seems to us as if he feels the same way, looks at the world the same way as an adult, only that his intellect, his will is not yet as developed as that of an adult. That is not the case. The adult merely feels the taste on his tongue and palate, so to speak. What has already come to the surface of the adult's organism penetrates the child's organism much deeper towards the interior. To a certain extent, the child becomes completely sensitive to taste when it ingests food, just as it becomes completely sensitive to light when light and colors penetrate its eyes. It is not merely figurative, it is a reality: when the child is exposed to light, the light vibrates not only through its nervous system, it vibrates through its respiration, through its blood system, it vibrates through the whole organism, just as light is active in the eye alone in an adult. The child is inwardly entirely a sensory organ. And just as the eye is devoted to the world and lives entirely in the light, so the child lives entirely in its surroundings. It carries the spirit within itself to absorb what lives in its physical environment with its whole organism. Therefore, when we shout at the child, its organism is in a very specific activity. By shouting at it, something vibrates much more strongly in the child's inner being than can be the case with an adult, who has opposing forces stirring within. And what is caused there, like a stagnation of the child's mental-spiritual life, is transferred directly to the child's physical organization. And if it often happens that we shout at a child, even frighten it, then we are not only affecting the child's soul, we are affecting the child's entire physical organization. The health of the adult person up to a very late age is in our hands, depending on how we behave in the child's environment.
The most important educational tool for a child in the first years of life is how you behave as an adult in your environment. If the child is exposed to a constant, fast-paced life and hustle and bustle in its environment, its entire physical organization will simply take on the tendency to rush inwardly. And he who is a connoisseur of man, so that he can start from the spirit and the soul in observation, can see from a child in its eleventh or twelfth year whether it has been treated in such a way that it has been in a restless, hurrying environment, or in an environment appropriate to it, or in an environment that moves too slowly. We can see it in the child's step. If the child has been in an environment that hurries, in which everything happens with excessive speed, in which the impressions are constantly changing, the child steps with a quiet step. The way in which the child takes in its environment is shaped in its physical organization to the point of stepping, of pacing. If the child is in an environment that does not give it sufficient stimulation, that constantly drives it to boredom, then we see the reverse, how the child walks through the world with a much too heavy step in later life. I mention these examples because they are particularly striking and because they show how human observation can be refined. You can see from this example what we can give the child if we can observe it in the right way in its first years. For in this first age of man the child is what I would like to call an imitative being for his whole environment, an imitative being also with regard to what he should do in the spiritual, also in the moral. I would also like to give an example of this.
Anyone who has had much to do with such things in life can experience them. For example, a father once came to me and said: "Our boy has always been a good child, has done everything that has aroused our moral approval; now he has stolen money! - Now, anyone who really recognizes human nature will ask the following question in such a case: Yes, where did the child take the money from? - You are told: From the cupboard. - Who takes money out of the cupboard every day? - The mother! - The child has just seen day after day that the mother has taken money from the cupboard. The child is an imitative being, as a mental sensory organism it is completely devoted to its environment and, by setting its own being in motion, does the same as it sees in its surroundings. The child does not follow admonitions in the first years of its life, it does not follow commandments and prohibitions - these do not have a strong hold on its soul - the child only follows what it sees in its surroundings. But it sees much, much more precisely than the adult, even if it does not bring what it sees to consciousness. And it imprints on its organism what it sees in its surroundings. The whole organism becomes a reflection of what the child sees in the environment.
In our current knowledge, we greatly overestimate what we call heredity. When we look at the characteristics of human beings in later life, we talk about the fact that most of them have been passed on through the generations in a purely physical way. Anyone who is a true connoisseur of human nature, however, can see how the child's muscles develop according to the impressions of its environment, depending on whether we treat it gently and mildly, with love or in some other way, and how breathing and blood circulation develop according to the feelings the child experiences. If the child often experiences that some person in its environment approaches it with love, so that out of an instinctive co-experience with the bark it sets the pace that the child's inner being demands, the child will develop a healthy respiratory system in relation to its finer organization. If you ask where the dispositions for a useful physical organism come from in the adult human being, then to answer this question look at what has had an effect on the child, which is a single large sensory organ, from the environment, what has gone into the muscles, into the blood circulation, into the breathing, from the words, from the gestures, from the whole behavior of the child's environment. You will see that the child is not only an imitator with regard to learning to speak, which is based entirely on imitation - whereby it also first develops and strengthens its speech organization in the physical - but that the child in its entire organism, and indeed in the finer structure of this organism, is precisely in the physical an imprint of what we accomplish in its environment.
And so we can say: How a person progresses through life up to the highest age by having developed his physical organism in a strong or weak way, to what extent a person can rely on his physical organism, he has to thank - or not to thank - the impressions which the environment knows how to make on the very small child.
What I have now said to you with regard to the developing human being as an imitative being extends to the first age of the child, which presents itself to a real knowledge of man as that from birth to the change of teeth, up to about the seventh year. In this seventh year more changes for the child than is usually thought. In the second part of the lecture, after the first part has been translated, I will explain what then occurs in the child's development and what must be understood as the basis for true educational practice and the art of education.
Around about the seventh year, with the change of teeth, not only does this physical symptom of a transformation of the physical human nature occur, but a complete transformation of the spiritual being also takes place in the child. If the child is essentially an imitative being up to the change of teeth, and it is in its nature to be dependent on forming its physical organism under the forces of imitation, then around the seventh year, with the change of teeth, the necessity begins for the child to no longer be physically devoted to its environment, but to be able to be spiritually devoted. If everything that is found in the child's environment up to the change of teeth, I would say, penetrates into the depths of the child's being, then that which is built on the self-evident authority of those who educate or teach penetrates into the child for the second epoch of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. This self-evident authority is expressed in the fact that the child does not want to learn somehow out of its own nature what it is taught by adults in the arts of reading and writing and the like. It is an immeasurably great pedagogical error to believe that the child has even the slightest urge to acquire those things which are means of communication, means of revelation for what you know, i.e. for the adult! All that really develops in the child is that which emerges from loving devotion to self-evident authority. The child learns things when it learns them, not for some reason that is in the classroom; the child learns because it sees that the adult knows and handles them, because it hears from the adult, who is its self-evident educating authority: this is the right thing to do and so on. This goes right down to the moral principles.
I was able to show how, up to the change of teeth, moral principles must also be absorbed by the child through imitation. From the seventh to about the fourteenth year, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, everything must be absorbed through loving devotion to the self-evident authority. We must not somehow intellectually approach the child with a commandment: this is good or that is bad, but the child must grow up in the feeling of finding good what the self-evident authority reveals to him as good. And he must dislike that which the self-evident authority presents to him as evil. No other reasons for liking or disliking good or evil may arise for the child than those which the authority standing next to him reveals to him for good or evil. Not because the thing itself appears good or bad to him according to his intellect, but because the educator finds it so. This is what must be important in real, true education. What matters is that everything moral, including everything religious, must come to the child through the human being from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. The human relationship of the teacher, the educator, that is what everything must depend on. What we think we are teaching the child by appealing to its power of judgment, we teach it in such a way that it actually kills much in the child internally. The child is no longer entirely a sensory organ, but although it has already transferred its sensory organs to the surface of the body, it still has its whole soul inside. And it brings nothing out of the intellectualistic, through which the senses are somehow organically regulated, made lawful, but it can surrender to the self-evident authority of the educator's personality precisely when everything confronts it in an animated image.
But this requires us to shape the education between the change of teeth and sexual maturity in a thoroughly artistic way, to start from the artistic everywhere. If we introduce the child to the letters through which he is to learn to read and write, then these letter forms today, in our present civilization, are those to which the child has no relationship, no relation at all. We know that in certain civilizations these letter forms have come from the pictorial imitation of external processes and things themselves; the world has come from pictorial writing. By bringing writing to the child, we must also start from the image. In Stuttgart, in the Waldorf art of education, we therefore follow the principle that we do not begin with letters as such at all, but that we begin artistically with painting and drawing lessons. This is difficult for the child who enters school at the age of six or seven; but the difficulty will be overcome. And it will be overcome if we stand beside the child with our authority in the right way, so that the child actually gets the feeling within himself: what the teacher creates out of color, out of form, I also want to imitate, because I want to become like him. - Everything has to be learned in this roundabout way. But this can only be learned if there is an actual relationship between the teacher and the pupil, not only externally but also internally, which pours out the artistic over everything that is taught and educated. For there are imponderables at work between the educator and the child. It is not only the skill that has been acquired in education and the like that has an effect, but above all the teacher's attitude, emotional feeling, the whole constitution of his soul. But it can be given a corresponding direction if one is also able to approach the spiritual aspects of the world as a teacher.
I will again use an example to characterize what I mean, an example that I particularly like to use. Let us assume that we want to stimulate the child in moral and religious matters. This will happen, in the right way, around the age of nine or ten. In the kind of education I am talking about, you can tell from the child's development what you have to teach him in each year, even month. I want to teach him, let us say, in the ninth or tenth year of his life, an idea of the immortality of the human soul. I can talk about it intellectually, but it will not only make no impression on the child, it will even stunt the child's soul; for when I lecture intellectually to the child about the moral and religious, nothing of the soul is mixed in! The soul is based on imponderables that must act between the teacher and the child. I can teach the child what he should experience about the immortality of the soul in a pictorial, symbolic, artistic way. I can tell him: Look at the butterfly chrysalis, the butterfly breaks through this chrysalis, flies out of it and then moves in the sunshine. - So it is with the human soul: it is in the human organism like the butterfly in the chrysalis; it leaves the organism when man passes through the gate of death and from then on moves in the spiritual world.
Now one can try to teach this to the child in two ways. As a teacher you can, of course, feel very clever and say to yourself: I am clever, the child is stupid; the child cannot understand what I, through my cleverness, am trying to explain about the immortality of the soul. I form it into an image for him, I make an effort to form this image.
Yes, if I only adjust the image for the child and feel myself immensely elevated above the image, this will make an impression on the child that will soon pass, that will certainly also wither something inwardly in the child. But I can relate to the child in a different way through my emotional perception, I can say to myself: I believe in this image myself. I do not fabricate this image; the divine-spiritual powers themselves place the butterfly chrysalis and the fluttering butterfly into nature in order to place before me an image, a real image, which is placed into the world through nature itself for that which I am to comprehend as the immortality of the soul. The immortality of the soul confronts me on a simpler, more primitive level, in the butterfly crawling out. God himself wanted to show me this in the butterfly crawling out. - Only when I can develop faith in my own images in this way can this peculiar, invisible supersensible take place between me and the child. And if I form my own conception with such depth of soul and place it in front of the child, then this image remains something that is rooted in the child for life and continues to develop. What we achieve if we can convert everything into pictorial teaching between the change of teeth and sexual maturity is that we do not teach the child ready-made concepts which it should hold on to and which should be as precise as possible. If we teach the child ready-made concepts, it is as if we wanted to clamp its hand in a machine so that it cannot develop freely. What we are concerned with is that we teach the child concepts that are inwardly mobile, concepts that grow like our limbs, so that what we develop before the child may have become something quite different in new decades, in the eighteenth, twentieth, fortieth year of his life.
But these things can only be judged - and with him it becomes a natural art of education - by someone who not only looks at the child in the present and asks what its needs are, what its powers of development are, but who can survey the whole of human life. Let me give you an example. Let us assume that between the change of teeth and sexual maturity we bring out in the child that inner devotion to the educator. I would like to give an example to illustrate the strength that must come about. He who sees through such things knows what a happiness it is in his life, even into his later years, if in childhood he was able to hear from those around him about a very revered relative whom he has not yet seen. He is allowed to visit him one day. After everything he has heard, after the whole picture that has been sketched out for him, he walks with shy reverence to this relative. With shy awe he sees the door being opened. It is a tremendous thing to look at something worthy of reverence in this way. If one has been able to venerate a person in this way, to look at him in this way, it is something that becomes deeply rooted in the human soul and from which one can still reap the rewards in one's later years! It is the same with all moving, living concepts that are brought to the child, not pressed into it. Whoever achieves this in a child, that the child really looks up to the educator in shy reverence as the self-evident authority, creates something in the child for the latest age, which I would like to express in the following: We know that there are people who, when they have reached a certain age, are a blessing to the environment in which they live, whose words need not be many at all; they have a blessing effect, their words. It is something that permeates the voice, it is not the content of the words, it is a blessing for people to come into the proximity of such people in the time of childhood. If we go back to such a fifty-, sixty-year-old and look at what he was given in childhood between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, what he learned, we come to the conclusion that he learned to worship, to worship morally, which taught him to look up in the right way, religiously, to the higher powers of the world; a person who learned to pray in the right way, if I may say so. A person who has learned to pray in the right way transforms what he has learned inwardly about worship into powers of blessing in old age, into powers through which he can be a blessing to those around him. And I would like to put it as metaphorically as possible: The person who never learned to fold his hands to pray as a child can never in his life develop the power to spread out his hands to bless.
This is why we should not form some abstractly acquired ideas and stuff them into the child, but that we know how to proceed with the child if we want to form something in his soul that is of fruitful significance for his whole life. And so we will not bring abstract reading and writing directly to the child, but will begin with writing, but from an artistic point of view, by allowing everything that exists in the world in the form of abstract letters to emerge from the image. By first teaching the child to write in this way, we meet its need to turn not only its observation, but also its whole person, not just its head. We will first teach the child to write; for if the child takes up writing in this way, that it is involved from the image with the whole person, not just with the head, we are giving it the right thing. Once it has learned to write in this way, it can learn to read.
Those who are too strongly biased in today's school system will say: Yes, but the child learns to read and write more slowly than it has learned so far. - But the issue is whether the pace that is maintained today is the right one! Basically, it is only right if the child is only taught to read after the age of eight! So that everything is developed out of the pictorial, the artistic.
The person who has become a connoisseur of man through a real understanding of the soul and spirit of man will be able to observe man in the finest way, and then educational art will flow from observation. Suppose we have a child whose legs step too strongly on the earth; this is due to the fact that the child was influenced by the soul in the wrong way before the change of teeth. But we can still do a lot of good by bringing something artistic from within, through the images we stimulate, and by revitalizing what the human being has shaped up to the change of teeth after the change of teeth. Therefore, the person who is a true connoisseur of human nature will preferably occupy a child who has a strongly emerging crotch by artistically drawing and painting it. On the other hand, a child who has a too light, prancing step: the whole later formation of character, tremendously deep morals, depends on the fact that we stimulate such a child more towards the musical. And so we can say in each individual case, if we can look inside the person, how we should bring about what we pour into the picture.
We can say that up until the change of teeth, the child will have its closest natural environment in its parents and family. But we have to follow this up with children's schools, play schools. We can only do the right thing by developing what we should call play, childlike activity, if we know how it enters into the child, into the physical organism. Just imagine, for example, how a child who is given a finished doll, a so-called “beautiful” doll, which even has a beautifully painted face, i.e. is as “finished” as possible, how such a child - these things cannot be observed through gross anatomy - gets heavy blood, how its physical organization is disturbed. We don't even know how badly we are sinning, how it affects the child! If we make the puppet ourselves from a few rags by placing it next to the child, paint the eyes on the puppet's rags so that the child can see them moving and developing, then the child absorbs this into the mobility of its organism; it passes into its blood, into its respiratory system.
For example, if we have a melancholy child in front of us; whoever looks at the child outwardly, without any soul view, will say: a melancholy child, inwardly black - we must bring quite lively colors into his surroundings, must make his games as red and yellow as possible, must dress him in clothes that are as bright as possible, so that the child wakes up through the bright colors, is awakened. - No, it won't! Because, you see, this will only cause an inner shock in the child, it must drive all the vital forces in the opposite direction. It is precisely blue or blue-violet colors and play objects that we must bring near a child who is a melancholy, introverted child; while we stimulate the child who is inwardly active by bringing bright colors into his surroundings. In this way it brings its own organism into harmony with its surroundings, and it heals what is perhaps too flighty in it, too nervous, precisely through the mobility and brightness of its surroundings.
In this way it is possible, right down to the smallest detail, right down to the direct help of practice, to gain from real knowledge of the human being what needs to be done in terms of education and teaching alongside the child. If one educates in this way, one will realize that it can basically correspond to the ideas we have about what the child should learn at this or that age, what we should graft into it, how we should work it. But the person who knows that the child can nevertheless only take from its environment what is inherent in its organism will say to himself: Let us assume that a child is predisposed not to be constantly active in the outside world in a robust way, but to work on a small scale, I would like to say, to work towards the artistic. If one lets this child - because one is obstinately intent on this - work robustly externally, then the very dispositions which are in the child for some finer work atrophy; and those dispositions which one would like to develop, because one imagines oneself that they are universally human, because one must develop them in every human being, atrophy all the more. The child does not care; it carries out the work between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, but nothing remains in it, nothing grows in the child of what is grafted into it in this way. In the principle of education that we are dealing with here, it is important that the educator has a keen sense of what is present in the child and that he knows how to do the right thing at every moment out of his teaching instinct from what he observes in the child physically, mentally and spiritually.
In this way the teacher will actually be able to observe the pedagogy for the child as it grows up. In Waldorf education the curriculum is read from the child. Everything that has to be done not only from year to year, from month to month, from week to week, is to be read from the child, so that the child can be given what it demands through its inner nature. The teaching profession is the one which demands the greatest selflessness, which therefore does not tolerate having a preconceived program of any kind, which must be entirely concerned with treating the child in such a way that through the relationship one has with the child, by standing next to it, one basically only brings about the opportunity for the child to develop itself.
The best way to do this from the seventh to the fourteenth year, especially at elementary school age, is to completely refrain from appealing to the intellect, but to channel everything into the artistic. In this way, the physical, as well as the mental, as well as that which should already form the spiritual, can be clothed in images at this age. In particular, we are to put the moral into a picture when the child is in its ninth or tenth year. We should not give moral commandments, we should not say: This is good or this is bad - but place good people in front of the child, bring good people to the child, so that it can gain sympathy for the good. Or place evil people in front of him, so that he can develop an antipathy towards evil. We can awaken the moral being in his mind through the image.
However, these are only hints. I wanted to give them for the second age of man. In the third, very short part of my lecture, after the second part has been translated, I will explain how the whole results in a fundamental education, not just an education for the moment of childhood, but for the whole of human life.
The extent to which the art of education described here is supposed to have the right effect on the whole life of man, from birth to death, from infancy onwards, will be best seen in the individual case of education, through the so-called art of eurythmy. What has been shown as eurythmic art in public performances in London these days is something that now also has a pedagogical-didactic side to it.
Eurythmic art consists in the fact that movements of the individual human being or of groups of human beings are actually evoked from the depths of human nature in such a way that everything that occurs in such movements flows lawfully from the human organism in the same way as human speech or singing. In this eurythmic art every single gesture, every single mimic manifestation is not something arbitrary, but a real, visible language, so that eurythmically, that is visibly, it can be sung through certain movements just as it can be spoken. What is held back in spoken language in terms of the possibility of movement of the whole human being, and what only passes over in metamorphosis into audible sound, is developed in eurythmic art as a visible language.
Now we have introduced this eurythmy in the Waldorf School from the lowest elementary school class to the highest. And it can be seen that the child actually places itself in this visible language, where just as a sound means something as a soul expression in audible language, so every finger movement, every hand movement, every movement of the whole body is a real speech sound, only in visibility. It can be seen that the child at the age of the change of teeth and even beyond, up to sexual maturity, lives itself into this language just as naturally as it found its way into spoken language as a very small child. It turns out that his whole organism, body, soul and spirit - for eurythmy art is at the same time spiritual and mental gymnastics - finds its way into this eurythmic language with the same naturalness as it has found its way into spoken language; that it feels that something is given to it which follows directly from its whole organism. But thus, alongside gymnastics, which derives its essence more from the observation of the outer physical body, something is placed in eurythmy through the observation of the spiritual-soul, where the human being feels himself in every movement not only as a body, as a through-soul body, but as a through-spiritualized soul in a body formed by the soul. Again, what the human being experiences as eurythmic art, on the one hand, has a tremendously lively effect on all that is in him as dispositions and, on the other hand, also has an effect in its fruitfulness, in its effectiveness on the whole of life.
You can let the child do external gymnastics as well as you like, but if this gymnastics is only done according to the rules of the body, you will not protect the child by doing gymnastics, let us say, from all kinds of metabolic diseases, rheumatisms themselves, i.e. diseases that later become metabolic diseases. Because what you get out of gymnastics tends to compact the physical body. But what you extract by extracting every single movement from the spirit and the soul makes the spirit and soul the rulers of the soul and the physical body for the whole of life. You do not prevent the sixty-year-old body from becoming brittle by mere external gymnastics. But if you educate the child in such a way that you allow its movements to emerge from the soul as gymnastics, you prevent the body from becoming brittle in its sixtieth year, even if it would otherwise have become so, if you therefore give pictorial instruction between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, that you allow this picture, which otherwise occupies the soul, to pass spiritually and mentally into the body. So this pictorial language is nothing other than spiritual gymnastics. This shows you, however, that the aim of this spiritual gymnastics is to develop the child evenly in body, soul and spirit, so that what has been developed in childhood will bear fruit throughout the child's life. We can only do this if we feel like the gardener who has to care for a plant: he does not want to intervene in the movement of the sap, to artificially graft something in, he brings about the opportunity externally so that the plant can develop; he has a natural inner shyness to intervene in this inner growth of the plant. We must have this reverent fear of what wants to develop into life in the child. We will not, for example, always look in a one-sided way at teaching the child something. The principle of authority, as I have mentioned, must in the deepest sense of the word have a spiritual influence on the child. And it must be such that the child has the opportunity to absorb things that it cannot yet see through intellectually, but absorbs because it loves the teacher. Then we don't deprive the child of the opportunity later on to have an experience that it would otherwise not have. If I have already understood everything as a child, then I do not have the following experience: Let us assume that in my thirty-fifth year something comes to me that presents itself in such a way that I have accepted this or that thing from a beloved teacher, from a beloved authority, on authority, on loving faith - now I am more mature, now a completely new understanding of it dawns on me! This fact that in mature age one can return to something that one has previously accepted, not yet fully understood, but now revives in maturity, this gives an inner satisfaction, this gives an empowerment of the will, which we must not take away from man if we have the necessary respect for his freedom and want to educate him as a free being. Educating people as free beings is the basis of the educational principle we are talking about here. That is why we should not implant in the child a development of the will through intellectual moral judgments. We should be clear that if we develop moral views in the child's mind between about the seventh and fourteenth year, when the mind develops sympathy and antipathy, the child will then, when it has become sexually mature and is confronted with life, the intellectual-moral feeling and what it wants, that that which permeates the will, that which from the will animates the earlier developed aesthetic feeling in the moral, that this, by igniting from freedom in life, gives man strength and inner security.
You see, whoever wants to apply the right art of education in the way meant here does not just look at the child's age, he looks at the human being, even if he has entered the latest age. For he wants that what he plants in the human being really behaves like the flower that grows and flourishes out of the inner conditions of nature. When we plant the flower, we cannot want it to develop quickly; rather we wait for it to develop slowly from the root, to the stem, to the leaf and to the blossom and fruit, and to develop freely in the light of the sun. This is what we hold up to ourselves as the goal of the right art of education. We want to nurture that in the child which is the root of life, but we want to nurture it in such a way that little by little life is transformed, physically, mentally and spiritually, out of that which we nurture in childhood and adolescence. Then we can be sure that, with full respect for human freedom, we place the human being into the world as a free being through our education, so that what is at the root of education really does develop freely - not through our grafting him into slavery - so that he can develop accordingly in later life, even under the most diverse circumstances, if he wants to be a free person.
However, these educational principles make the greatest demands on the teacher. They do so; but can we take it for granted that what is initially the most perfect being in this world here on earth - the human being - can be treated in a simple way without really penetrating the peculiarities of this being in full depth? Are we not to believe that what we do to man must be something like reverence, a kind of religious service? We must believe that the art of education demands of us the greatest selflessness, that we can completely forget ourselves and must immerse ourselves in the being of the child in order to see in the child what is then to flourish for the world in the adult human being. Selfless prudence and the real will to delve into human nature for a true knowledge of human nature are the basic conditions of a true art of education.
Why should we not recognize it as a necessity to devote ourselves to such an art of education, when we have to say to ourselves that education is the noblest thing in the whole of human life, from which it is also gained! Education is the noblest thing in all human life on earth.
That is the progress. The progress that we cultivate through education consists in the fact that the young generations given to us from the divine worlds are so developed by what we as the older generation have developed that this younger generation takes a further step beyond us in the progress of humanity. Should it not seem right to every discerning person that by doing service to humanity in this way, by offering the best and most beautiful things of the older generation to the younger generation, we are also practicing the art of education in the most beautiful, most humane way?