The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Free School and Threefolding

[ 1 ] The public cultivation of spiritual life in education and schools has increasingly become a matter for the state in recent times. The fact that the school system is a matter for the state is currently so deeply rooted in people's consciousness that anyone who thinks they have to shake this judgment is regarded as an unworldly "ideologue". And yet it is precisely in this area of life that there is something that requires the most serious consideration. For those who think about "unworldliness" in the way I have indicated have no idea what an unworldly thing they themselves are defending. Our school system is particularly characterized by traits that are a reflection of the declining currents in the cultural life of contemporary humanity. The social structure of the newer states has not kept pace with the demands of life. They show, for example, an organization that does not meet the economic demands of modern mankind. They have also imposed this backwardness on the school system, which, having torn it away from the religious communities, they have made completely dependent on themselves. The school at all its levels educates people in the way that the state needs them for the services it deems necessary. The needs of the state are reflected in school facilities. There is much talk of general human education and the like, which one wants to strive for; but the newer man unconsciously feels himself so strongly as a member of the state order that he does not even realize how he is talking about general human education and actually means the training to become a useful public servant.

[ 2 ] In this respect, the attitude of today's socialist thinkers promises nothing good. They want to transform the old state into a large economic organization. Into this the state school is to be continued. This continuation would magnify all the faults of the present school in the most alarming way. Up to now, there was still much in this school that came from times when the state was not yet the ruler of education. Of course, one cannot wish back the rule of the spirit that originated in those old times. But one should endeavor to bring the new spirit of advanced humanity into the school. This spirit will not be there if the state is transformed into an economic organization and the school is reshaped in such a way that people emerge from it who can be the most useful working machines in this economic organization. There is much talk today of a "unified school". It doesn't matter that in theory this unified school is imagined to be something very beautiful. Because if the school is designed as an organic part of an economic organization, it cannot be something beautiful.

[ 3 ] What is important for the present is to anchor the school entirely in a free spiritual life. What is to be taught and educated should only be derived from the knowledge of the nascent human being and his individual dispositions. True anthropology should be the basis of education and teaching. The question should not be: What does a person need to know and be able to do for the existing social order? What is inherent in man and what can be developed in him? Then it will be possible to constantly supply the social order with new forces from the growing generation. Then there will always live in this order what the full human beings who enter it make of it; but the growing generation will not be made into what the existing social organization wants to make of it.

[ 4 ] A healthy relationship between school and social organization can only exist if the latter is always supplied with the new individual human dispositions formed in uninhibited development. This can only happen if the school and the educational system within the social organism are placed on the basis of their self-administration. State and economic life should receive the people educated by the independent spiritual life; they should not, however, be able to dictate their course of education according to their needs. What a person should know and be able to do at a certain age must result from human nature. The state and the economy must be organized in such a way that they correspond to the demands of human nature. It is not for the state or economic life to say: This is how we need people for a certain office; so check us for the people we need and first make sure that they know and can do what we need; but the spiritual part of the social organism should, out of its self-government, bring the appropriately gifted people to a certain degree of education, and the state and economy should organize themselves according to the results of the work in the spiritual part.

[ 5 ] Since the life of the state and the economy are not something separate from human nature, but the result of this nature, it is never to be feared that a truly free spiritual life, left to its own devices, will train people who are alien to reality. On the other hand, such alienated people arise precisely when the existing state and economic institutions regulate the educational and school system of their own accord. For in the state and the economy, the points of view must be taken from within what already exists and has become. The development of the nascent human being requires completely different guidelines for thinking and feeling. As an educator, as a teacher, one can only cope if one faces the person to be educated or taught in a free, individual way. For the guidelines of one's work, one must only be dependent on knowledge about human nature, the nature of the social order and the like, but not on rules or laws given from outside. If one seriously wishes to transform the existing social order into one based on social aspects, one must not shy away from placing intellectual life - including education and schools - under its own administration. For from such an independent member of the social organism people will emerge with zeal and desire to work in the social organism; from a school regulated by the state or by economic life, however, can only come people who lack this zeal and desire, because they feel the after-effects of a rule that should not have been exercised over them before they are fully conscious fellow citizens and employees of this state and this economy. The nascent human being should grow up through the power of the educator and teacher who is independent of the state and the economy and who can freely develop individual abilities because his own are allowed to rule in freedom.

[ 6 ] In my book "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft" (The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future), I have endeavored to show that in the conception of life of the leading party socialists essentially only the world of thought of the bourgeoisie of the last three to four centuries, driven to a certain extreme, lives on. It is the illusion of these socialists that their ideas represent a complete break with this world of thought. This is not the case, but only the particular coloring of the bourgeois conception of life from the feelings and sensibilities of the proletariat. This is particularly evident in the position which these socialist leaders take on intellectual life and its integration into the social organism. Through the outstanding importance of economic life in the bourgeois organization of society in recent centuries, intellectual life has become strongly dependent on economic life. The consciousness of a spiritual life founded in itself, in which the human soul has a share, has been lost. The view of nature and industrialism have contributed to this loss. The way in which the school has been integrated into the social organism in more recent times is connected with this. Making people useful for external life in the state and the economy became the main concern. Less and less thought was given to the fact that he should first and foremost be filled as a spiritual being with the awareness of his connection with a spiritual order of things and that through this awareness he gives meaning to the state and the economy in which he lives. Minds focused less and less on the spiritual world order and more and more on the economic relations of production. Among the bourgeoisie, this became a sentimental direction in the life of the soul. The proletarian leaders turned it into a theoretical view of life, a dogma of life.

[ 7 ] This dogma of life would become disastrous if it wanted to be fundamental for the development of the school system in the future. Since in reality no cultivation of a true spiritual life, and in particular no productive establishment of the school system, can result from an economic organization of the social organism, however excellent it may be, this establishment would first have to be brought about by the continuation of the old world of thought. The parties who want to be the bearers of a new way of life would have to have the spiritual in the schools cultivated by the bearers of the old world views. But since, under such conditions, an inner connection between the growing generation and the cultivated old cannot arise, the spiritual life would become more and more stagnant. The souls of this generation would become desolate through the untruthful standing in a view of life that could not become a source of inner strength for them. People would become soulless beings within the social order emerging from industrialism.

[ 8 ] To prevent this from happening, the movement for a tripartite social organism strives for the complete separation of education from state and economic life. The social organization of the personalities involved in education should not depend on any other powers than the people involved in this system. The administration of educational institutions, the organization of courses and teaching objectives should only be undertaken by persons who at the same time teach or are otherwise productively engaged in intellectual life. Each such person would divide their time between teaching or other intellectual activities. Creation and administration of the teaching system. Anyone who is able to enter into an unprejudiced assessment of the spiritual life can see that the living power needed to organize and administer education and teaching can only arise in the soul if one is actively involved in teaching or other spiritual production.

[ 9 ] Only those who see impartially how a new source of spiritual life must open up for the construction of our collapsed social order will fully admit this for our present day. In the essay "Marxism and the Threefold Order" I referred to Engels' correct but one-sided thought: "The administration of things and the management of production processes takes the place of the government of persons." As true as this is, it is also true that in the social orders of the past, human life was only possible because people were co-governed along with the management of economic production processes. If this co-government ceases, then people must receive the life impulses from the free spiritual life, which have worked in them through the previous government impulses.

[ 10 ] There is another aspect to all this. Spiritual life only flourishes when it can unfold as a unity. From the same development of the powers of the soul that gives rise to a satisfying conception of the world that sustains man, must also come the productive power that makes man a true collaborator in economic life. Practical people for external life will only emerge from an educational system that is able to develop the higher worldview instincts in a healthy way. A social order that only administers things and manages production processes would gradually go astray if it were not supplied with people with healthily developed souls.

[ 11 ] A reorganization of our social life must therefore gain the strength to establish an independent educational system. If people are no longer to "rule" over people in the old way, then the possibility must be created for the free spirit in every human soul to become as powerful a director of life as is possible in each human individuality. But this spirit cannot be suppressed. Institutions that wanted to regulate the school system from the mere point of view of an economic order would be an attempt at such suppression. It would lead to the free spirit continually revolting from its natural foundations. The continuous shattering of the social structure would be the necessary consequence of an order that wanted to organize the school system from the management of the production processes at the same time.

[ 12 ] For those who see these things, the establishment of a human community that energetically strives for the freedom and self-administration of the educational and school system becomes one of the most important demands of our time. All other necessary needs of the time will not be satisfied if the right is not recognized in this area. And all that is really needed is an impartial look at the shape of our present intellectual life with its disunity and its limited carrying capacity for human souls in order to recognize this right.