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Practical Course for Teachers
GA 294

27 August 1919, Stuttgart

VI. On the Rhythm of Life and Rhythmical Repetition in Teaching

You will not only have to be teachers and educators at the Waldorf School, but if things go well you will also have to be protagonists of the whole Waldorf School system. For, of course, you will know far more exactly what the Waldorf School really means than can be conveyed to the neighbouring or more distant outside world. But to be the true protagonists of the aims of the Waldorf School and of its aims for civilization in general you will have to be in a position to conduct your defence against prevailing opinion wherever this shows itself antagonistic or even merely demurring. Consequently, I must introduce into these pedagogical-didactic reflections a chapter which will quite naturally connect with what we have already so far analysed in our discussions on method.

You know that in the sphere of educational theory, as well as other spheres, much is expected at the present time from the so-called experimental psychology. Experiments are carried out on people to determine an individual's gift for forming ideas, for memorizing, even for willing, although this can naturally only be ascertained by a detour. The will fulfils itself in sleep, and the electrical apparatus in the psychological laboratory can only indirectly discover an individual's experiences during sleep, just as these cannot be observed directly by way of experiment. Such experiments, indeed, are carried out. Do not imagine that I object to such experiments as a whole. They can be valuable as tendrils of science, as offshoots of science. All kinds of interesting things can be learnt from such experiments and I have decidedly no desire to condemn them, lock, stock, and barrel. I should like everyone who is attracted to work of this kind to have the means of acquiring such psychological laboratories and of carrying out their experiments there. But we must consider for a moment the rise of this experimental psychology in the form in which it is especially recommended by the educationist, Meumann,1See Dr. C. v. Heydebrand, Gegen Experimentalpsychologie und Pädagogik. who is really one of the Herbartian school.

Why is experimental psychology practised to-day? Because people have lost the gift of studying man directly. They can no longer rely on the forces which inwardly bind one man to another—or, to the child. So they try to discover by external devices, by external experiments, what should be done with the growing child. Clearly our principles and methods of teaching take a much more inward course. This is, moreover, urgent and vital for the present day and the immediate future of mankind. Granted, then, on the one hand, the urge to experimental psychology, on the other hand, as a result of this experimental psychology, we get the misconstruction of certain simple facts of life. Let me illustrate this by an example.

These experimental psychologists and educationists have lately been particularly interested in what they call the process of comprehension; for instance, the process of comprehension in reading, in the reading of a given passage. In order to ascertain this process of comprehension they have tried to work with “subjects,” as they are called. If we summarize the steps taken in great detail, this is the procedure. A “subject,” a child or an adult, is given a reading passage, and the investigation is now directed as to which is the most effective method for the child, for instance, to adopt, in order to arrive at the most rapid comprehension. It is discovered that the most effective method is first to “dispose” the reader to the reading passage, that is, first to introduce the person concerned to the meaning of such a reading passage. Then, after numerous tests, the “subject” carries out what is called “passive comprehension.” After having dealt with the meaning, by making “scheme” or plan, it is supposed to be passively comprehended. For through this passive assimilation of a reading passage there should occur what is called “learning to anticipate”: repeating once more in free spiritual activity what has just been worked out in scheme or plan and then passively assimilated. And then follows, as fourth act to this drama, the filling in of all that until now has remained uncertain, that is, of all that has not penetrated completely into the life of the human spirit and soul. If you let the subject carry out, in correct succession, first the process of familiarizing himself with the meaning of a reading passage, then of passive assimilation, then of learning to anticipate, then of returning to the as yet incompletely assimilated parts, you then see that a given reading passage is most effectively grasped, read, and remembered. Do not misunderstand me: I mention this procedure because it must be mentioned in view of the fact that people talk to-day so much at cross-purposes, for they may want to imply the same thing with diametrically opposed words. Accordingly, the experimental psychologists will say: “A scrupulously faithful method like this reveals exactly what should be done in education.” But those who have a profounder understanding of the life of the whole being know that this is not the way to true education—any more than you can put together again a living beetle from its separate parts after it has been dissected. It cannot be done. Nor can it be done by trying anatomy on the human soul-activity. It is interesting, of course, and in another connection it can be extremely valuable for science, to practise anatomy on the activity of the human soul—but it does not make educators. For this reason there can proceed from this experimental psychology no new true building up of education; this can only proceed from an inner understanding of man.

I had to say this for fear lest you should misunderstand me when I make a statement which will naturally cause annoyance to a supporter of modern opinion. The statement is one-sided in its way, and its one-sidedness must, of course, be counterbalanced. What do the experimental psychologists get, when they have split up into atoms like this the soul of their subject and have made a martyr of him—this process is not pleasant if it is inflicted on you—what good do they get out of it? According to them they have obtained an extraordinarily valuable result, which is constantly being impressed by italics in educational textbooks as a conclusion arrived at. This statement, translated into decent German, runs roughly like this: You can remember a reading passage better when you have understood the meaning than when you have not understood the meaning. It has been “determined by research”—to use scientific jargon—that it is useful firstly to understand the meaning of a reading passage if you want to learn it easily. And here I must make the heretical declaration that, in as far as this theory is correct, I could have known it before, for I should like to know what person with a normal human intelligence does not know for himself that a reading passage can be remembered better when its meaning has been understood than when this has not been understood. Every single one of the conclusions of experimental psychology is an appalling platitude. The platitudes printed in the textbooks of experimental psychology are sometimes of such a kind that only those people can have anything to do with them who have already trained themselves in the pursuit of science to submit to intense boredom for an occasional striking point. You are easily trained to do this by the drill of the school-system—for even the elementary school has this defect, although it is less conspicuous here than at the universities.

This heretical statement is meant particularly for the educationist: It is to some extent self-evident that one must first understand the meaning of a thing which is to be remembered. But there is this to consider: that what has been assimilated by understanding the meaning, only affects the observation, only affects thought-perception, and that this elevation of the human being to the level of sense-comprehension educates him one-sidedly to a mere observation of the world, to a thought-perception. And if we teach simply and solely in accordance with this theory we shall get nothing but weak-willed people. The statement, then, is in a sense correct—and yet not conclusively correct. It ought, as a matter of fact, to be further expressed in these terms: If you want to do the best possible thing for the thinking perception of the individual you can do it by analysing the meaning of everything that he absorbs. And, in fact, if we were to analyse merely the meaning of things, we could go very far in educating human observation of the world. But we should never educate a man's will—volitional man—for the will cannot be forced by simply throwing the light on the meaning of a thing. The will likes to sleep, and it does not wish to be fully awakened by what I should like to call the perpetual unchaste laying bare of the meaning. And the point is, that the very inevitability of life breaks in upon this simple truth of the value of revealing meanings, so that with the child, too, we must study subjects which do not lay bare the meaning. Then we shall educate his will.

The mischievous effects of the one-sided application of the principles of explaining the meanings have been particularly active in movements like the Theosophical Movement. You know how much I have protested for years against a certain mischievous influence in Theosophical circles. I have even had to see Hamlet, for instance, a pure work of art, explained in terms of theosophical cant like this: “This is Manas, this is the Ego—that is the astral body. This character represents one thing—that one another.” Such explanations were particularly in favour. I protested against them because it is a sin against human life to interpret symbolically what is meant to be taken directly, in its elements, as art. It leads to a mischievous reading of a meaning into things, and this is dragged to the level of mere observation to which it should not be dragged. This all arises from the fact that the actual Theosophical Movement is a decadent movement. It is the furthest-flung offshoot of a declining culture; in its entire attitude it has nothing to do with Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy aims at being the opposite: at being an ascending movement, the beginning of an ascent. That is a radical difference. That is why so much is written in the field of Theosophy which is really an extreme symptom of decadence. But that there exist people at all who contrive to interpret Hamlet symbolically, character by character, is the result of the appalling way in which we have been educated only to look for meanings.

Human life makes it indispensable that we should not only be educated in terms of the meaning, but from what the will experiences in the sleeping life: by rhythm, measure, melody, harmony of colours, repetition, in fact all spontaneous activity which does not seek to comprehend. When you let the child repeat sentences which he is far from understanding because of his tender age, when you encourage the child to take in these sentences just by memory itself, you certainly do not influence his comprehension—because you are unable to enter into their meaning, for that must only dawn later—but you influence his will, and that is what you should do; that is what you must do. You must try first of all to acquaint the child with things which are first and foremost artistic: music, drawing, plastic art, etc.; but on the other hand you must also give the child things which can have some abstract form of meaning in such a way that he does not, it is true, understand this at once, but only later in life. Then he will understand it because he has assimilated it by repetition, and can remember, and later understand, with his greater maturity, what he could not understand before. There you have worked upon his will. And quite especially you have worked upon his feeling—and you should not forget this. Just as feeling—this can be observed of the soul as well as of the spirit—lies between willing and thinking, so does the education of feeling lie midway between the methods of educating the thinking and those of willing. For the thinking knowledge or thinking perception we must definitely practise subjects concerned with revealing meanings: reading, writing, etc.; for action inspired by will we must cultivate everything which does not aim at a mere interpretation of meanings but at a direct impression through the whole being, for instance, of artistic subjects. What lies midway between the two (i.e. thought and will) will chiefly influence the development of feeling, the formation of its disposition. You can produce a strong effect on the education of the feeling nature when the child is made to assimilate something first of all only by rote, uncomprehended, without tampering with its meaning. For only after some time, when he has matured through other processes, and remembers it, can he understand what he absorbed earlier. This is a subtlety of education which must absolutely be respected, if we are to educate people with inner feelings. For feeling plays a peculiar role in life. In this sphere, too, people should make observations. But they do not observe rightly. I will indicate an observation which you can easily, with a little industry, make for yourselves.

Suppose you are trying to get a clear idea of the state of Goethe's soul in 1790. You can do this by studying a selection of the works composed by Goethe in the year 1790. You find, of course, at the end of every edition of Goethe a chronological index of his poems, in their order of composition; so you take out the poems written in 1790 and the plays written in 1790 and study them. You remember that in precisely this year he finished the beautiful essay, Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen (“The Metamorphosis of Plants”); you recall that just at that time he conceived the first idea of the Farbenlehre (“Theory of Colour”); you imagine from all this the state of his soul in 1790 and ask yourselves: “What were the influences active on Goethe's psychic life in 1790?” You will only be able to answer this question if you cast a critical glance on all Goethe's previous experiences from 1749 to 1790 and on what followed after this year—of which Goethe at the time was still unaware, but which you now know—during the period from 1790 to 1832, that is, to his death. Then there emerges the remarkable realization that the actual state of his soul in the year 1790 was a combination of what was to come later, the conquests remaining for the individual to make, and those he had already experienced. This is an extraordinarily significant discovery. People only avoid it because it leads into provinces which they quite naturally do not like to enter for observations of this kind. Try to extend your observations in this way to the soul-life of an individual who died recently and whom you have known for some time. If you train yourself to a more careful study of the soul you will then find this: A man, a friend of yours, died, let us say, in 1918. You have known him for some time, so that you can ask yourselves: “What was the state of his soul in 1912?” If you consider everything that you know of him you will find that the state of his soul in 1912 was such that the preparation for his approaching death was unconsciously reflected in his psychic disposition at that time; it was unconsciously reflected in his feelings. Taken as a whole I call the life of the feelings the psychic disposition, “Mood of Soul” (Seelenstimmung). A man who is soon to die has a quite different inner disposition from one who has still long to live.

You will now understand that people do not like to study these things, for it would create a very unpleasant impression—to put it mildly—if we were to observe the signs of approaching death in people's psychic disposition. These, however, can be observed. But in everyday life it is not wise for people to notice these things. That is why they are usually hidden from this life just as the will is withdrawn, as a sleeping power, even when we are awake, from the waking consciousness. But the educator must, after all, take up a position outside ordinary life to some extent. He must not be afraid to take up his stand detached from his usual life and to absorb truths for his teaching which are rather disturbing, rather tragic, for everyday life. In this connection there is lost ground to cover in the educational system of Central Europe. You know that especially the teachers in the universities in the early decades of this Central European system of education and teaching were people on whom the actual man of the world rather turned up his nose in scorn. Unworldly, pedantic fellows, who could not adapt themselves properly to the world, who always wore long, black frock-coats and never evening dress; these were the former educators of youth, especially the teachers of more mature youth. In these days things have changed. The university professors have begun to wear correct evening dress and to adapt themselves to worldly custom, and it is considered a great mark of progress that their former state is at last a thing of the past. It is a good thing. But it must be a thing of the past in other senses, too; it must in future be a thing of the past to the extent that the detachment from life does not merely consist, as it did formerly, in the teacher's wearing the invariable long pedantic frock-coat when other people did not. The detachment from life can remain to some extent, but it must be bound up with a profounder conception of life than that of people who wear evening dress for dinner. I am only speaking figuratively, of course, for I have nothing against “evening dress.”

An educator must be able to study life more profoundly, otherwise he will never give appropriate and fruitful attention to the growing child. Consequently, he will have to accept, among others, such truths as I have just mentioned. Life itself, to a certain extent, demands the presence of mysteries. We need no diplomatic secrets in the near future. But for education we need the knowledge of certain mysteries of life. The old Mystery teachers withheld such secrets of life esoterically because these could not be revealed directly to life. But in a certain degree every teacher must know truths which he cannot impart directly to the world, because the world would be confused in normal progress, if it had access to such truths all the time. But you do not fully understand how to treat the growing child if you cannot estimate the influence on him of something imparted in such a way that he does not fully understand it at the time. He will understand when it is returned to later, and when he is told, not only what he then realizes, but what he had assimilated earlier. This makes a profound impression on the feelings and disposition.

For this reason the custom should be followed in every school as faithfully as possible—wherever possible—of the teacher retaining his same pupils; of taking them over for the first form, of keeping them the next year in the second form, of going up with them again in the third year, etc., as far as this is possible in conjunction with outside regulations. The teacher, after finishing with the eighth class, should then begin anew with the first class. For one must sometimes be able to come back years later in a positive way to what was instilled into the children's souls years before. In any case, the formation of the disposition or feeling life suffers greatly when the children are passed every year to a fresh teacher who cannot himself develop what he instilled into children in earlier years. It is part of the teaching method itself that the teacher should go up with his own pupils through the different school-stages. Only in this way can we enter into the rhythm of life. And in the most comprehensive sense life has a rhythm. This manifests itself even in everyday decisions, in the rhythm of day to day itself. If you have accustomed yourself, for instance, only for a week, to eat a buttered roll every day at half-past ten in the morning, you will probably feel hungry for the buttered roll at the same time in the second week. The human organism conforms as closely as this to a rhythm. But not only the external organism, but the whole being, is rhythmically organized. For this reason, too, it is a good thing throughout life as a whole—and that is what we are concerned with when we educate and teach children—to be able to attend to rhythmical repetition. For this reason we do well to think that even every year is not too often to return to quite definite educational themes. Therefore select subjects for the children, make a note of them, and come back to something similar every year. Even in more abstract things this method can be followed. You teach, let us say, in a way suited to the child's disposition, addition in the first school year; you come back to addition in the second, and teach more about it, and in the third year you return to it in the same way, so that the same act takes place repeatedly, but in progressive repetition.

To enter like this into the rhythm of life is of quite particular importance for all education and teaching—far more important than continuously repeating: Do build up your lessons according to the principle of meaning—thus inartistically pulling to bits whatever you deal with. You can only divine what is demanded here by gradually developing a feeling for life itself. But you will then part company very markedly, precisely as educationists, from the external experimental aims so frequent to-day even in education. Again, not to condemn, but to correct, certain tendencies which have proved detrimental to our spiritual culture, do I emphasize these things. You can embark on modern textbooks of education where the results are worked out which have been obtained through experiments on memory. The “subjects”—people experimented upon—are treated in a strange way. Tests are made on them to show how they can remember something of which they have understood the meaning; then they are given words written one after the other with no connecting sense, and they have to learn these, etc. These experiments for ascertaining the laws of the memory are practised very extensively to-day. Again a result has been obtained which is committed to formulae in scientific form. Just as, for instance, in physics, the Law of Gay-Lussac, among others, is formulated, people are anxious to formulate such laws in experimental education or psychology. You find, for example, very learnedly expounded, the gist of conclusions about a certain scientific yearning which is quite justified, namely, to prove the existence of types of memory. Firstly, the quickly or slowly assimilating memory; secondly, the quickly or slowly reproducing memory. So a “subject” is tormented to furnish evidence for the fact that there are people who memorize easily and people who memorize with difficulty; then other “subjects” are tormented to prove that there are people who can call back to mind easily, and people who can call back to mind only with difficulty, what they have once learnt. Now it has been determined by research that there are such types of memory; those showing a rapid or a slow assimilation, and those showing an easy or painful recollection or reproduction of what was assimilated. Thirdly, there are also types of memory which can be called “true and exact;” fourthly, there is a comprehensive memory; fifthly, a retentive and reliable memory, in opposition to the type which easily forgets. This answers very satisfactorily to the craving of modern science to systematize. The scientific result has now been obtained. We can ask: “What has been discovered scientifically in exact psychology about the types of memory?” And we learn: firstly, there is a type of memory which assimilates easily or laboriously; secondly, a type which reproduces easily or laboriously; thirdly, there is a true or exact memory; fourthly, a comprehensive memory, that is, there are people who can remember great passages of prose in contrast to those who can only remember short ones; fifthly, a retentive memory, which has perhaps remembered things from years ago, in contrast to the kind which forgets quickly.

This scientific method of observation scrupulously and very conscientiously maltreats innumerable victims, and sets to work most ingeniously to obtain results, in order that education, too, after having tested the children in experimental psychology, may know what various types of memory are to be differentiated. But with all due respect for such a science, I should like to make the following objection. Anyone endowed with a little sound common sense must know that there are people who commit things to memory easily or with difficulty; there are also those who easily or laboriously recall things once known, and again there are people who can recount things truly and accurately, in contrast to those who muddle everything they try to tell. There are people with an extensive memory, who can remember a long story, in contrast to those who can only remember a short one; and there are also people who can remember a thing for a long time, even years, and people who have forgotten everything in a week! It is part, in fact, of the fairly ancient wisdom of sound common sense, but it is discovered again in a science which inspires us with respect, because the methods which it applies are so ingenious.

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this: firstly, let us, above all, prefer to cultivate sound common sense in education and teaching, rather than expend it on such experimenting, which will, it is true, develop ingenuity very considerably, but which will not bring the teacher in touch with the quality of individuality in the child. But we can also draw a second conclusion: our age is actually in a sorry plight if we have to assume that the people who are going to become our teachers and educators have so little healthy human intelligence that they can only learn in this roundabout way that there are the different kinds of memory which we have just mentioned. Moreover, these things must undoubtedly be considered symptoms of the state of our present spiritual standard.

I had to draw your attention to these things. For people will say to you: “Well, you have let yourself be appointed at this Waldorf School. It is only a dilettante institution; the people there don't even want to know anything about the greatest conquest of our time: about the methods of experimental psychology. The study of this experimental psychological method is for experts, but the methods of the Waldorf School are quackery in comparison!” You will have to realize that you will sometimes have to acknowledge the connection of science—which must not be respected any the less for that—with what remains to be built up by us on an inner educational theory and method, but which, compared with the external relations which are set up by experiment, inspires an inner loving attentiveness towards the child. Certainly this quality has not completely disappeared; it prevails even more than is realized. But it definitely prevails in opposition to the ever-encroaching aims of scientific educational theory. To a certain extent it is true that the pursuit of science can destroy a good deal in modern life, but it has not the power to drive out all healthy human intelligence. This healthy human intelligence or sound common sense should be our starting-point, and when this is properly cultivated it will produce an inner connection with the ideals of teaching. We must realize, of course, that we live at the beginning of a new age, and we must completely master this fact. Down to the middle of the fifteenth century the surviving traditions of the Greek and Latin-Roman times were preserved. After the middle of the fifteenth century these are only the clattering after traditional repetition. But the people whose life is in this “clattering” still feel, in certain sub-regions of their consciousness, the craving to return to the Graeco-Latin age, which we can admire profoundly in its place, of course, but whose persistence into our age is no longer a living thing. Just think for a moment how self-satisfied the person is in these days, who has learnt something and can descant on it in the following terms: “A good teacher must not merely bring out the rhythm, and the rhyme in a poem; he must comment technically on the text; he must introduce the meaning, and only when he has unravelled the meaning will the pupils absorb it as an inner activity.” After such a person has long held forth on the importance of starting with the meaning, he concludes with: “As the old Latin said: rem tene, verba sequuntur, if you have understood the question, words will follow of themselves.” These are tactics which you will frequently find in people who imagine that they have learnt a great deal, that they have gone far beyond dilettantism in enunciating something first as a piece of sublime contemporary wisdom, and then following it up with, “as the old Latin said. ...” And, of course, he has only to say it in Greek for people to believe implicitly that it is something quite extraordinary. For the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization, this attitude was desirable; it is unbecoming in our age. The Greek did not introduce his children, first of all, to old grammar schools where they could learn, let us say, ancient Egyptian; he made them learn Greek. But to-day we begin by introducing people to ancient tongues before their own. That is a fact which must be realized.

Sechster Vortrag

Sie werden ja nicht nur Lehrer und Erzieher an der Waldorfschule werden müssen, sondern, wenn es mit den rechten Dingen zugehen wird, so werden Sie auch Verteidiger des ganzen Systems der Waldorfschule werden müssen. Denn Sie werden ja, was die Waldorfschule eigentlich will, viel genauer wissen, als das der näheren oder ferneren äußeren Welt beigebracht werden kann. Damit Sie aber Verteidiger desjenigen, was mit der Waldorfschule und mit dieser für die allgemeine Geisteskultur angestrebt wird, im rechten Sinne sein können, werden Sie in die Lage kommen müssen, diese Verteidigung gegen die Meinungen der Gegenwart auch zu führen, wenn diese Meinungen der Gegenwart gegnerisch oder auch nur einwendend auftreten. Daher muß ich in dieser unserer pädagogisch-didaktischen Betrachtung eine Episode einfügen, die sich aber ganz naturgemäß an das anschließen wird, was wir in den bisherigen Didaktikstunden bereits auseinandergesetzt haben.

Sie wissen, daß auch auf pädagogischem Gebiete jetzt viel erwartet wird von der sogenannten experimentellen Psychologie. Man macht Experimente mit Menschen, um festzustellen, wie der Mensch begabt sein kann für das Begriffebilden, für das Gedächtnis, jetzt auch schon für das Wollen, obwohl das naturgemäß nur auf einem Umwege konstatiert werden kann, da ja das Wollen sich schlafend vollzieht und man das, was der Mensch im Schlaf erlebt, mit dem elektrischen Apparat im psychologischen Laboratorium ebenso nur mittelbar erfahren kann, wie auch das, was er im Schlafe erlebt, nicht unmittelbar experimentell beobachtet werden kann. Man macht also solche Experimente. Glauben Sie nicht, daß ich im ganzen gegen solche Experimente etwas einzuwenden habe. Diese Experimente können als Ranken der Wissenschaft, als äußere Ausläufer der Wissenschaft bedeutungsvoll sein. Man kann allerlei Interessantes durch solche Experimente erfahren, und ich will sie durchaus nicht in Bausch und Bogen verdammen. Ich wünschte, daß alle, die es möchten, die Mittel zu solchen psychologischen Laboratorien bekommen könnten und dort ihre Experimente vollziehen könnten. Aber wir müssen das Entstehen dieser experimentellen Psychologie einmal ins Auge fassen, wie sie besonders auch von dem Pädagogen Meumann, der im Grunde genommen auch in der Herbartschen Schule steht, empfohlen wird.

Warum treibt man in der Gegenwart experimentelle Psychologie? Weil man die Begabung für das unmittelbare Beobachten des Menschen verloren hat. Man kann sich nicht mehr auf die Kräfte stützen, die den Menschen mit dem Menschen, also auch mit dem Kinde, verbinden, innerlich verbinden. Man will daher durch äußerliche Veranstaltungen, durch äußerliche Experimente das erfahren, was man zu tun hat mit dem werdenden Kinde. Sie sehen schon: Sowohl unsere Pädagogik wie auch unsere Didaktik gehen einen viel innerlicheren Weg. Der ist auch für die Gegenwart und die nächste Zukunft der Menschheit dringend notwendig. Wenn nun so auf der einen Seite der Drang nach experimenteller Psychologie entspringt, so liegt auf der andern Seite auch das vor, daß die Verkennung gewisser einfacher Tatbestände des Lebens wieder hervorgerufen wird durch diese experimentelle Psychologie. Das will ich Ihnen an einem Beispiel veranschaulichen.

Diese experimentellen Psychologen und Pädagogen hat in der neueren Zeit besonders das interessiert, was sie den Auffassungsvorgang nennen, zum Beispiel den Auffassungsvorgang beim Lesen, beim Lesen irgendeines Lesestückes. Man hat, um diesen Auffassungsvorgang erkennen zu können, versucht, mit Versuchspersonen, wie man sagt, zu arbeiten. Das also, was sehr ausführlich vollzogen wird, das würde, kurz zusammengefaßt, in der folgenden Weise verlaufen. Man legt einer Versuchsperson, einem Kinde oder einem schon mehr Erwachsenen, ein Lesestück vor, und man untersucht nun, was zum Beispiel das Kind am zweckmäßigsten zuerst tue, damit es zur schnellsten Auffassung komme. Man konstatiert, daß es dazu am zweckmäßigsten ist, wenn man zunächst das Lesestück «disponiert», das heißt, wenn man den Betreffenden zuerst in den Sinn eines solchen Lesestückes einführt. Dann geht man durch zahlreiche Versuche dazu über, daß die betreffende Versuchsperson das vollzieht, was man «passives Aufnehmen» nennt. Also nachdem der Sinn durch Disponieren ergründet ist, soll passiv aufgenommen werden. Denn durch dieses passive Aufnehmen eines Lesestückes soll sich das vollziehen, was man «Antizipierenlernen» nennt: noch einmal in freier geistiger Tätigkeit dasjenige wiederholen, was zuerst disponiert und dann passiv aufgenommen wurde. Und dann soll als vierter Akt dieses Dramas folgen die Nachholung alles dessen, was noch unsicher geblieben ist, also was noch nicht vollständig in das menschliche geistig-seelische Leben hineingegangen ist. Wenn man in richtiger Aufeinanderfolge die Versuchsperson vollziehen läßt erst das Sich-Bekanntmachen mit dem Sinne eines Lesestückes, dann das passive Aufnehmen, dann das antizipierende Lernen, dann das Aufsuchen von noch nicht voll durchdrungenen Teilen, dann kann man bemerken, daß dadurch ein Gelesenes am zweckmäßigsten aufgefaßt, gelesen und behalten wird. -— Mißverstehen Sie mich nicht: Was ich so anführe, das führe ich aus dem Grunde an, weil ich es anführen muß gegenüber der Tatsache, daß die Leute heute so viel aneinander vorbeireden, denn man kann mit den entgegengesetztesten Worten dasselbe bezeichnen wollen. Daher werden die Experimentalpsychologen sagen: Durch eine solche hingebungsvolle Methode kommt man ja gerade darauf,was man in der Pädagogik tun soll.-Wer aber das Leben des ganzen Menschen tiefer erkennt, der weiß, daß man auf diese Weise zur wirklichen pädagogischen Tätigkeit nicht kommt — ebensowenig wie man dadurch, daß man einen Käfer zergliedert, aus den einzelnen Teilen den lebendigen Käfer wieder zusammensetzen kann. Das kann man nicht. Das kann man auch nicht, wenn man Anatomie treibt mit der menschlichen Seelentätigkeit. Es ist ja interessant und kann in anderer Beziehung wissenschaftlich außerordentlich fruchtbar sein: Anatomie zu treiben mit der menschlichen Seelentätigkeit - zum Pädagogen macht es nicht! Deshalb wird auch aus dieser experimentellen Psychologie nicht ein Neuaufbau der Pädagogik in Wahrheit hervorgehen; der kann nur hervorgehen aus einer innerlichen Auffassung des Menschen.

Ich mußte das sagen, damit Sie es nicht im falschen Lichte sehen, wenn ich jetzt einen Satz ausspreche, der natürlich den Menschen, der an den Meinungen der Gegenwart hängt, sehr ärgert, einen Satz, der natürlich auch in seiner Art einseitig ist, aber in seiner Einseitigkeit eben ergänzt werden muß. Was bekommen denn die Experimentalpsychologen, nachdem sie eine Versuchsperson auf diese Weise seelisch anatomisiert oder eigentlich ziemlich gemartert haben — denn angenehm ist diese Prozedur nicht, wenn sie mit einem vorgenommen wird-, was bekommen sie dann dadurch heraus? Sie haben ein nach ihrer Meinung außerordentlich bedeutungsvolles Resultat herausgebracht, das in den pädagogischen Handbüchern mit gesperrten Lettern immer wieder hervorgehoben wird als ein Ergebnis, zu dem man gekommen ist. Dieser Satz lautet ungefähr, wenn ich ihn in reinliches Deutsch übersetze, so: Daß man ein Lesestück besser lernend behält, wenn man den Sinn verstanden hat, als wenn man den Sinn nicht verstanden hat. — Das ist, um mit dem Idiom der Wissenschaft zu reden, also erforscht: daß es zweckmäßig ist, zuerst den Sinn eines Lesestückes kennenzulernen, denn dann lerne sich das Lesestück leichter. Da muß ich nun diesen ketzerischen Satz aussprechen: Insofern dieser Satz richtig ist, hätte ich ihn vorher wissen können, denn ich möchte wissen, welcher Mensch mit gesundem Menschenverstande nicht selbst wissen würde, daß ein Lesestück besser zu behalten ist, wenn man den Sinn verstanden hat, als wenn man ihn nicht verstanden hat. — Das ist überhaupt der Sinn der Ergebnisse der experimentellen Psychologie, daß sie furchtbare Selbstverständlichkeiten zutage fördert. Die Selbstverständlichkeiten, die in den Lehrbüchern der experimentellen Psychologie stehen, sind zuweilen so, daß nur der sich darauf einlassen kann, der sich schon dazu erzogen hat, im wissenschaftlichen Betriebe das Packende mit dem recht Langweiligen zusammenzunehmen. Dazu wird man schon erzogen, wenn man in der Volksschule dazu herandressiert wird, denn auch in der Volksschule kennt man diesen Mangel, wenn auch dort noch weniger, von der Hochschule gar nicht zu sprechen.

Dieser ketzerische Satz gilt doch ganz besonders für den Pädagogen: daß es in einem gewissen Sinne selbstverständlich ist, daß man zuerst von etwas, wenn man es behalten soll, den Sinn verstanden haben muß. Aber nun kommt etwas anderes: daß das, was man dem Sinne nach aufgenommen hat, nur auf die Betrachtung wirkt, nur auf das denkende Erkennen und daß man durch das Zum-Sinn-Erheben den Menschen einseitig heranzieht zum bloßen Betrachten der Welt, zum denkenden Erkennen. Und würden wir einzig und allein im Sinne dieses Satzes unterrichten, so würden wir Menschen herausbekommen, die alle willensschwach wären. Der Satz ist also in einer gewissen Beziehung richtig und dennoch nicht durchgreifend richtig. Er müßte nämlich obenhin noch so ausgesprochen werden: Willst du für das denkende Erkennen des Menschen das Allerbeste tun, dann tust du es, indem du bei allem, was er aufnehmen soll, den Sinn zergliederst. - Und in der Tat, wenn man einseitig nur bei allem zunächst den Sinn zergliedert, so könnte man sehr weitgehend das menschliche Betrachten der Welt erziehen. Aber man würde damit niemals den wollenden Menschen erziehen, denn das Wollen kann man nicht dadurch erziehen, daß man den Sinn einer Sache ins helle Licht rückt. Das Wollen will schlafen, und es will nicht in dieser Weise voll aufgeweckt sein, daß man überall, ich möchte sagen, in unkeuscher Weise den Sinn enthüllt. Und hierin liegt es, daß einfach die Notwendigkeit des Lebens diese einfache Wahrheit von der Sinnenthüllung durchbricht, so daß wir auch solches mit dem Kinde treiben müssen, was nicht dazu Veranlassung gibt, den Sinn zu enthüllen. Dann erziehen wir es zum Wollen.

Die Ungezogenheit in der einseitigen Anwendung der Sinnenthüllung hat sich insbesondere bei solchen Bewegungen ausgelebt, wie zum Beispiel die theosophische Bewegung eine ist. Sie wissen, wieviel ich im Laufe der Jahre vorgebracht habe gegen eine gewisse Ungezogenheit auf theosophischem Gebiete, Ich habe es sogar erleben müssen, daß zum Beispiel der «Hamlet», ein reines Kunstwerk, erklärt worden ist im Sinne der theosophischen Gaunersprache: Das ist Manas, das ist das Ich, das der Astralleib; die eine Person ist das, die andere ist jenes. — Solche Erklärungen waren ganz besonders beliebt. Ich habe dagegen gewettert aus dem Grunde, weil es eine Sünde gegen das menschliche Leben ist, wenn man das, was unmittelbar elementarisch als Künstlerisches aufgenommen werden soll, symbolisch ausdeutet. Dadurch wird in ungezogener Weise ein Sinn in die Dinge gelegt, und sie werden in die bloße Betrachtung heraufgeholt, in die sie nicht heraufgeholt werden sollen. Das alles kommt davon her, weil die eigentliche theosophische Bewegung eine Dekadenzbewegung ist. Sie ist der äußerste Ausläufer einer niedergehenden Kultur; sie ist nicht irgend etwas, was in seiner ganzen Haltung mit der Anthroposophie etwas zu tun hat. Diese Anthroposophie will das Gegenteil davon sein: eine aufsteigende Bewegung, der Anfang eines Aufstieges. Das ist ein radikaler Unterschied. Daher wird auch auf theosophischem Felde soviel hervorgebracht von dem, was im Grunde genommen äußerste Dekadenzerscheinung ist. Aber daß es überhaupt Menschen gibt, die es zuwege bringen, den «Hamlet» symbolisch auszudeuten in bezug auf die einzelnen Personen, das rührt davon her, daß wir so ungeheuer schlecht erzogen worden sind, daß wir so danach gestrebt haben, nur nach dem Sinn hin erzogen zu werden.

Das menschliche Leben macht es notwendig, daß nicht bloß nach dem Sinn erzogen wird, sondern daß erzogen wird nach dem, was vom Willen schlafend erlebt wird: das Rhythmische, der Takt, die Melodie, die Zusammenstimmung von Farben, die Wiederholung, überhaupt das Sich-Betätigen ohne den Sinn zu ergreifen. Wenn Sie das Kind Sätze, die es vermöge seiner Altersstufe längst noch nicht versteht, wiederholen lassen, wenn Sie es veranlassen, sich diese Sätze rein gedächtnismäßig einzuprägen, dann wirken Sie allerdings nicht auf sein Verständnis, weil Sie nicht eingehen können auf den Sinn, denn der muß sich erst später enthüllen, aber Sie wirken auf seinen Willen, und das sollen Sie auch, das müssen Sie auch. Sie müssen auf der einen Seite versuchen, diejenigen Dinge an das Kind heranzubrinigen, die vorzugsweise künstlerische sind: Musikalisches, Zeichnerisches, Plastisches und so weiter, aber Sie müssen auf der andern Seite auch das, was einen Sinn haben kann in abstrakter Form, dem Kinde so beibringen, daß es zunächst den Sinn zwar noch nicht versteht, sondern erst im späteren Leben, weil es ihn durch die Wiederholung aufgenommen hat und sich daran erinnern kann und mit dem stärkeren Reifezustand dann begreift, was es vorher nicht begreifen konnte. Da haben Sie auf sein Wollen gewirkt. Und ganz besonders haben Sie damit auch auf sein Fühlen gewirkt, und das sollten Sie eigentlich nicht vergessen. Wie das Fühlen — sowohl seelisch betrachtet zeigt sich dies, wie geistig betrachtet - zwischen Wollen und Denken liegt, so liegt auch die erzieherische Tätigkeit für das Fühlen zwischen den Maßnahmen, die vorgenommen werden müssen für das erkennende Denken und jenen Maßnahmen, die vorgenommen werden müssen für das Wollen und seine Ausbildung. Für das denkende Erkennen müssen wir durchaus das vornehmen, wobei es darauf ankommt, den Sinn zu enthüllen: Lesen, Schreiben und so weiter; für das wollende Tun müssen wir alles ausbilden, bei dem es nicht auf ein bloßes Deuten des Sinnes ankommt, sondern auf ein unmittelbares Ergreifen durch den ganzen Menschen: Künstlerisches. Was zwischen beiden liegt, das wird vorzugsweise auf die Gefühlsbildung, auf die Gemütsbildung wirken. Auf diese Gemütsbildung wirkt es wirklich sehr stark, wenn das Kind in die Lage versetzt wird, erst etwas rein gedächtnismäßig aufzunehmen, unverstanden, ohne daß an dem Sinn, trotzdem einer vorhanden ist, herumgemäkelt wird, so daß es erst nach einiger Zeit, wenn es durch andere Maßnahmen reifer geworden ist, und sich dann wieder daran erinnert, das erst verstehen kann, was es früher aufgenommen hat. Das ist eine Feinheit in der erzieherischen Tätigkeit, die aber durchaus beachtet werden muß, wenn man innig fühlende Menschen erziehen will. Denn das Fühlen stellt sich in eigentümlicher Weise in das Leben hinein. Auf diesem Gebiete sollten die Menschen auch beobachten. Sie beobachten nur nicht wirklich. Ich will Ihnen eine Beobachtung angeben, die Sie leicht, wenn auch mit einiger Emsigkeit, machen können.

Denken Sie, Sie versuchen sich klarzumachen den Seelenzustand Goethes im Jahre 1790. Sie können das, wenn Sie sich, herausgreifend, nur mit einigen von den Dingen beschäftigen, die Goethe gerade im Jahre 1790 hervorgebracht hat. Sie finden ja am Schlusse jeder GoetheAusgabe ein chronologisches Verzeichnis seiner Gedichte, wie sie nacheinander entstanden sind. Sie nehmen also heraus, was im Jahre 1790 an Gedichten entstanden ist und was er in diesem Jahre an Dramen geschrieben hat, und betrachten es. Sie vergegenwärtigen sich, daß er in diesem Jahre gerade die schöne Abhandlung «Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen» fertiggestellt hat; Sie erinnern sich, daß er damals gerade die erste Idee der «Farbenlehre» gefaßt hat, vergegenwärtigen sich aus alledem seine Seelenstimmung vom Jahre 1790 und fragen sich: Was spielte in dieses Seelenleben Goethes 1790 hinein? Das werden Sie sich nur beantworten können, wenn Sie einen prüfenden Blick auf alles werfen, was bei Goethe vorangegangen ist in den Jahren von 1749 bis 1790 und was nach diesem Jahre weiter gefolgt ist - was Goethe damals noch nicht kannte, Sie aber jetzt kennen - in der Zeit von 1790 bis 1832, also bis zu seinem Tode. Dann stellt sich das merkwürdige Erlebnis heraus, daß der augenblickliche Seelenzustand des Jahres 1790 ein Zusammenwirken ist des Späteren, was der Mensch sich erst erwerben will, mit dem Vorhergehenden, was er schon erlebt hat. Das ist eine außerordentlich bedeutsame Beobachtung. Die Menschen scheuen sie nur, weil sie in Gebiete hineinführt, die man begreiflicherweise für derartige Beobachtungen nicht gerne vornimmt. Versuchen Sie Ihre Beobachtung in dieser Weise zu erstrecken auf das Seelenleben eines Menschen, der vor kurzem verstorben ist und den Sie längere Zeit gekannt haben. Sie werden dann, wenn Sie sich zur feineren Seelenbeobachtung erziehen, das Folgende erleben. Ein Mensch ist Ihnen als ein befreundeter hinweggestorben, sagen wir 1918. Sie haben ihn schon seit längerem gekannt, so daß Sie sich fragen können: Wie war sein Seelenzustand im Jahre 1912? Wenn Sie alles berücksichtigen, was Sie von ihm wissen, so werden Sie finden, daß seine Seelenstimmung im Jahre 1912 so war, daß die Vorbereitung zu seinem baldigen Tode unbewußt in seine damalige Seelenstimmung hineinspielte; in das Gefühlsleben unbewußt hineinspielte. Und das Gefühlsleben, im ganzen genommen, nenne ich die Seelenstimmung. Ein Mensch, der bald stirbt, hat eine ganz andere Seelenstimmung als einer, der noch lange lebt.

Jetzt werden Sie begreifen, daß man diese Dinge nicht gerne beobachtet, denn es macht einen, gelinde gesagt, recht unangenehmen Eindruck, wenn man etwa bemerken würde, daß in der Seelenstimmung eines Menschen sich sein baldiger Tod ausspricht. Das tut es ja. Aber es ist für das gewöhnliche Leben auch nicht gut, daß die Menschen so etwas bemerken. Daher ist es für gewöhnlich diesem Leben so entzogen, wie das Wollen als schlafendes auch im Wachen dem wachen Bewußtsein entzogen ist. Aber der Erzieher muß sich ja gewissermaßen doch aus dem gewöhnlichen Leben herausstellen. Er darf sich nicht scheuen, sich neben sein gewöhnliches Leben zu stellen und Wahrheiten für seine pädagogische Tätigkeit aufzunehmen, die auch etwas Erschütterndes, etwas Tragisches für das gewöhnliche Leben haben. In dieser Beziehung muß etwas nachgeholt werden gerade im mitteleuropäischen Erziehungswesen. Sie wissen, daß insbesondere die Lehrer der höheren Schulen in den früheren Dezennien dieses mitteleuropäischen Erziehungs- und Unterrichtslebens noch Persönlichkeiten waren, auf welche der eigentliche Weltmensch mit einer gewissen Hochnasigkeit herabgesehen hat. Weltfremde pedantische Menschen, die sich nicht recht in die Welt schicken konnten, die immer einen langen Rock und keinen Smoking anhatten und so weiter, das waren die ehemaligen Erzieher der Jugend, namentlich der reiferen Jugend. Es ist in neuester Zeit anders geworden. Die Universitätsprofessoren haben angefangen, sich regelrechte Smokings anzuziehen, sich sozusagen in die Welt zu schicken, und man betrachtet es als einen großen Fortschritt, daß schließlich der frühere Zustand überwunden worden ist. Das ist gut. Aber er muß auch nach anderer Richtung hin überwunden werden, muß in Zukunft dahin überwunden werden, daß das Danebenstellen gegenüber dem Leben nicht bloß darin besteht, wie es früher war, daß der Erzieher immer im langen pedantischen Rock erschien, wenn die andern Leute den Smoking angezogen hatten. Das Danebenstellen gegenüber dem Leben kann in einer gewissen Weise bleiben, sollte aber verbunden sein mit einer tieferen Lebensanschauung, als diejenigen sie aufnehmen können, die sich zu gewissen Zwecken den Smoking anziehen. Ich spreche natürlich nur bildlich, denn ich habe nichts gegen den Smoking.

Ein Erzieher muß das Leben tiefer betrachten können, sonst wird er nie den werdenden Menschen sachgemäß und fruchtbar behandeln können. Daher wird er solche Wahrheiten, wie die eben charakterisierte eine ist, schon auch aufnehmen müssen. Das Leben fordert selbst in gewisser Beziehung, daß es auch Geheimnisse in sich schließt. Gewiß, wir brauchen für die nächste Zukunft keine diplomatischen Geheimnisse. Aber wir brauchen für die Erziehung die Kenntnis gewisser Lebensgeheimnisse. Die alten Mysterienlehrer haben solche Lebensgeheimnisse esoterisch bewahrt, weil diese nicht unmittelbar dem Leben übergeben werden konnten. Aber in gewisser Beziehung muß jeder Lehrer Wahrheiten haben, die er nicht unmittelbar der Welt mitteilen kann, weil die Welt, die draußen lebt, ohne die Aufgabe zu haben, zu erziehen, beirrt würde bei ihren robusten Schritten, wenn sie an solche Wahrheiten tagtäglich herangehen würde. Aber Sie verstehen ja nicht völlig richtig, wie Sie das werdende Kind zu behandeln haben, wenn Sie nicht in der Lage sind zu beurteilen: welchen Weg macht etwas beim Kinde, was Sie ihm so mitteilen, daß es bei seinem gegenwärtigen Reifegrad dies noch nicht völlig versteht, was es aber verstehen wird, wenn Sie später wieder darauf zurückkommen und ihm dann nicht bloß das erklären können, was es jetzt wahrnimmt, sondern was es schon früher in sich aufgenommen hat. Das wirkt sehr stark auf das Gemüt. Daher sollte in ausgiebigstem Maße in jeder guten Schule das befolgt werden, daß, solange es nur geht, der Lehrer seine Schüler behält: in der 1. Klasse sie übernimmt, in der 2. Klasse sie behält, im dritten Jahre weiter mit ihnen aufsteigt und so weiter, soweit es durch die Möglichkeit der äußeren Einrichtungen geht. Und der Lehrer, der in diesem Jahr die 8.Klasse gehabt hat, soll dann das nächste Jahr wieder die 1.Klasse übernehmen. Denn man muß manchmal nach Jahren erst sachgemäß auf das zurückkommen können, was man vor Jahren in die Kinderseelen hineingegossen hat. Unter allen Umständen leidet die Gemütsbildung, wenn die Kinder jedes Jahr einem andern Lehrer übergeben werden, der nicht selbst das weiterbringt, was er in die Kinder in früheren Jahren hineingegossen hat. Das gehört schon einmal zum Didaktischen des Unterrichtes, daß der Lehrer mit den Schülern durch die Schulstufen aufsteigt. Dadurch allein kann man auf den Rhythmus des Lebens eingehen. Und das Leben hat im umfassendsten Sinne einen Rhythmus. Der zeigt sich schon bei den alltäglichen Vornahmen, auch wiederum im Alltäglichen. Wenn Sie sich gewöhnt haben, zum Beispiel nur eine Woche hindurch, täglich um halb elf Uhr morgens ein Butterbrötchen zu essen, dann werden Sie wahrscheinlich schon in der zweiten Woche um diese Stunde auf das Butterbrötchen hungrig sein. So sehr läuft der menschliche Organismus auf einen Rhythmus ein. Aber nicht nur der äußere Organismus, sondern der ganze Mensch ist auf Rhythmus hin veranlagt. Deshalb ist es auch gut, beim Gesamtverlauf des Lebens - und mit ihm hat man es zu tun, wenn man Kinder erzieht und unterrichtet — auf rhythmische Wiederholung sehen zu können. Deshalb ist es gut, daran zu denken, wie sogar jedes Jahr auf ganz bestimmte Erziehungsmotive wieder zurückgekommen werden kann. Suchen Sie sich daher Dinge aus, die Sie mit den Kindern durchnehmen, notieren Sie es sich und kommen Sie auf etwas Ähnliches jedes Jahr wieder zurück. Selbst bei den abstrakteren Dingen kann das eingehalten werden. Sie lehren, will ich sagen — wie es dem kindlichen Gemüte angemessen ist —, die Addition im 1. Schuljahr, Sie kommen auf die Addition im 2.Schuljahr wieder zurück und lehren mehr darüber; im 3. Jahre kommen Sie ebenfalls wieder darauf zurück. So daß sich derselbe Akt wiederholentlich, nur in progressiven Wiederholungen abspielt.

Dieses Eingehen auf den Rhythmus des Lebens ist für alle Erziehung und allen Unterricht von ganz besonderer Wichtigkeit, viel wichtiger als das fortwährende Betonen: Du sollst allen Unterricht sinnvoll gestalten, so daß du unkeusch bei allem das enthüllst, was in dem Dargebotenen enthalten ist. —- Man kann das, was damit verlangt wird, nur ahnen, wenn man sich allmählich ein Gefühl für das Leben entwickelt. Dann wird man sich aber gerade als Pädagoge sehr stark von dem entfernen, was heute vielfach in äußerlicher Weise, eben durch das Experimentieren, auch in der Pädagogik angestrebt wird. Wiederum nicht, um zu verurteilen, sondern um gewisse Dinge, die zum Schaden unserer Geisteskultur ausgeschlagen sind, besser machen zu können, hebe ich solche Dinge hervor. Sie können wiederum heute pädagogische Handbücher vornehmen, wo die Ergebnisse verarbeitet sind, die beim Experimentieren mit Versuchspersonen über das Gedächtnis gewonnen sind. Da traktiert man die Versuchspersonen auch recht merkwürdig. Man versucht mit ihnen die Art, wie sie etwas behalten können, was sie mit dem Sinn aufgenommen haben; dann schreibt man ihnen hintereinander Worte auf, die im Zusammenhange keinen Sinn haben, läßt sie diese aufnehmen und so weiter. Diese Experimente zur Feststellung der Gesetze des Gedächtnisses werden heute sehr umfangreich betrieben. Da ist wieder etwas herausgekommen, was nun in wissenschaftlicher Form in Sätzen registriert wird. So wie man zum Beispiel in der Physik das Gay-Lussacsche Gesetz oder andere registriert, so will man auch in der experimentellen Pädagogik oder Psychologie solche Gesetze registrieren. Da finden Sie zum Beispiel sehr gelehrt auseinandergesetzt, was ja gesagt wird mit Bezug auf eine gewisse wissenschaftliche Sehnsucht, die ganz gerechtfertigt ist, daß es Gedächtnisformen gibt: erstens, das leicht oder schwer aneignende Gedächtnis, zweitens, das leicht oder schwer reproduzierende Gedächtnis. Also man quält eine Versuchsperson zunächst, um herauszubekommen, daß es solche Menschen gibt, die sich leicht und die sich schwer etwas aneignen, dann quält man andere Versuchspersonen, um herauszubekommen, daß es Menschen gibt, die sich leicht oder schwer wieder ins Gedächtnis zurückrufen, was sie aufgenommen haben. Nun hat man erforscht, daß es solche Gedächtnisformen gibt, die leichtes oder schweres Aneignen zeigen, dann solche, die leicht oder schwer die Wiedererinnerung, die Reproduktion des Aufgenommenen zeigen. Drittens gibt es dann solche Gedächtnisformen, die man nennen kann treu und genau, viertens umfangreiches Gedächtnis, fünftens ein dauerndes oder zulängliches Gedächtnis, im Gegensatz zu dem, welches leicht vergißt. — Der Systematisierungssehnsucht der heutigen Wissenschaft entspricht das gar sehr. Man hat jetzt das wissenschaftliche Ergebnis. Man kann sagen: Was ist in exakter Psychologie wissenschaftlich über die Formen des Gedächtnisses erforscht? Und man weiß: Erstens, es gibt eine Gedächtnisform, die leicht oder schwer aneignet, zweitens eine solche, die leicht oder schwer reproduziert, drittens gibt es ein treues oder genaues Gedächtnis im Gegensatz zu einem untreuen oder ungenauen Gedächtnis, viertens ein umfangreiches Gedächtnis, das heißt Menschen, die große Lesestücke behalten können im Gegensatz zu solchen, die nur kleine behalten können, fünftens ein dauerndes Gedächtnis, das vielleicht noch nach Jahren die Dinge behalten hat, im Gegensatz zu einem solchen, welches rasch vergißt.

Trotz allen schuldigen Respektes vor der wissenschaftlichen Betrachtungsweise, die hingebungsvoll und wirklich sehr gewissenhaft unzählige Versuchspersonen malträtiert, die auf die scharfsinnigste Weise zu Werke geht, um zu ihren Resultaten zu kommen, damit man nun auch in der Pädagogik, nachdem man es auch auf dem Wege experimenteller Psychologie bei den Kindern gefunden hat, weiß, welche verschiedenen Gedächtnisformen man zu unterscheiden hat, trotz allen schuldigen Respektes gegenüber einer solchen Wissenschaft möchte ich dagegen doch sagen: Wer weiß nicht, wenn er mit etwas gesundem Menschenverstand ausgerüstet ist, daß es Menschen gibt, die sich leicht oder schwer gedächtnismäßig etwas aneignen, leicht oder schwer etwas wiedererinnern, dann solche, die treu und genau erzählen im Gegensatz zu solchen, die alles verhudeln, wenn sie etwas wiedererzählen; daß es Menschen gibt mit einem umfangreichen Gedächtnis, welche eine lange Erzählung aufnehmen können, gegenüber solchen, die nur eine kurze behalten können, und daß es dann auch Menschen gibt, welche lange, jahrelang eine Sache behalten können, und solche, die nach acht Tagen wieder alles vergessen haben? Es ist doch eine ziemlich alte Weisheit des gesunden Menschenverstandes! Aber erforscht wird sie doch wieder in einer Wissenschaft, die allen Respekt einflößt, denn die Methoden, welche darin angewendet werden, sind sehr geistreich, das ist gar nicht zu leugnen.

Nun kann man ein Zweifaches sagen: Erstens, man pflege lieber vor allem den gesunden Menschenverstand in Unterricht und Erziehung, als daß man ihn in solches Experimentieren hineinbringt, das zwar seinen Scharfsinn sehr stark entwickeln, aber ihn nicht an die Eigenschaft der Individualitäten der Kinder heranbringen wird. Aber man kann auch anders sagen: Es ist eigentlich schon schlimm mit unserem Zeitalter bestellt, wo man voraussetzen muß, daß die, welche man zu Lehrern und Erziehern machen will, so wenig gesunden Menschenverstand haben, daß sie erst auf großem Umwege so etwas erfahren müssen, wie, daß es solche verschiedene Gedächtnisarten gibt, wie wir jetzt angeführt haben. Diese Dinge sind auch durchaus als Symptome dessen zu betrachten, was aus unserer Geisteskultur geworden ist.

Ich mußte Sie einmal auf diese Dinge aufmerksam machen. Denn Sie werden es erleben, daß man Ihnen sagen wird: Nun ja, da habt ihr euch anstellen lassen an dieser Waldorfschule. Das ist eine ganz dilettantische Institution, da will man ja nicht einmal etwas wissen von der größten Errungenschaft unserer Zeit: von der experimentellen psychologischen Methode. Das Eingehen auf diese experimentelle psychologische Methode ist fachmännisch, was aber an der Waldorfschule didaktisch getrieben wird, das ist dagegen die reine Kurpfuscherei! — Sie werden einsehen müssen, daß Sie manchmal nötig haben werden, die Beziehungen der Wissenschaft — die gar nicht weniger respektiert werden soll - zu dem zu erkennen, was sich auf eine innerliche Pädagogik und Didaktik aufbauen muß, die dann aber gegenüber den äußerlichen Beziehungen, die man im Experimentieren kennenlernt, ein innerliches, liebevolles Sich-Beschäftigen mit dem Kinde herstellt. Gewiß, das letztere ist durchaus noch nicht ganz abgekommen; es herrscht sogar mehr als man denkt. Aber es herrscht durchaus gegen das, was man als wissenschaftliche Pädagogik immer mehr und mehr anstrebt. In einer gewissen Beziehung ist das auch richtig, daß der wissenschaftliche Betrieb in der Gegenwart zwar viel zerstören kann, daß er aber doch nicht die Macht hat, allen gesunden Menschenverstand auszutreiben. Und an diesen gesunden Menschenverstand wollen wir anknüpfen, und der wird, wenn er in der richtigen Weise gepflegt wird, eine innerliche Beziehung hervorrufen zu dem, was im Unterricht geschehen soll. Wir müssen uns schon bewußt werden, daß wir im Aufgange eines neuen Zeitalters leben und diese Tatsache recht durchdringen müssen. Bis in die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts hinein hat sich, nachwirkend, das erhalten, was von der griechischen und lateinisch-römischen Zeit hergekommen ist. Nach der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts ist das nur noch etwas, was nachklappt. Aber die, welche in diesem Nachklappenden leben, haben in gewissen Unterschichten ihres Bewußtseins noch den Hang, immer wieder in das griechisch-lateinische Zeitalter zurück zugehen, das man ja an seinem Orte voll bewundern kann, dessen Fortsetzung aber nicht mehr in unserer Zeit lebt. Denken Sie nur einmal, wie selbstzufrieden der Mensch, der etwas gelernt hat, heute wird, wenn er Ihnen auseinandersetzen kann: Wer richtig erzieht, darf bei Gedichten nicht bloß auf den Rhythmus, auf den Reim sehen, er muß sachgemäß kommentieren, in den Sinn einführen, und erst wenn man sachgemäß in den Sinn eingeführt hat, dann wird man auch das erreichen, was der Mensch als Tätigkeit in sich aufnehmen soll. Denn wird ein solcher Mensch sagen, nachdem er lange tradiert hat, wie man vom Sinn ausgehen soll -, schon der alte Lateiner sagte: Rem tene, verba sequuntur.... Hast du die Sache begriffen, so wird das Wort von selbst nachfolgen. — Das ist ein taktisches Verhalten, das Sie heute vielfach bei den Leuten finden werden, welche glauben, recht viel gelernt zu haben, recht sehr über den Dilettantismus hinausgekommen zu sein, indem sie etwas zuerst als hohe Gegenwartsweisheit dozieren und dann hinterher sagen: Schon der alte Lateiner sagte... - Und wenn er es gar griechisch sagen kann, dann glauben die Leute erst recht, es sei etwas ganz Besonderes. Für das vierte nachatlantische Kulturzeitalter war es gut,sich so zu verhalten, für unser Zeitalter paßt das nicht. Der Grieche hat seine Kinder nicht zuerst in alte Gymnasien geführt, wo sie etwa altägyptische Sprache gelernt hätten, er hat sie griechische Sprache lernen lassen. Wir aber gehen heute so vor, daß wir die Menschen zuerst in alte Sprachen einführen. Hier liegt etwas vor, was begriffen werden muß.

Sixth Lecture

Not only will you have to become teachers and educators at the Waldorf school, but if all goes well, you will also have to become defenders of the entire Waldorf school system. For you will know much more precisely what the Waldorf school actually wants than can be taught to the immediate or wider outside world. However, in order for you to be defenders of what the Waldorf school and this general intellectual culture strive for in the right sense, you will have to be able to defend it against contemporary opinions, even if these contemporary opinions are hostile or merely objectionable. Therefore, I must insert an episode into our pedagogical-didactic consideration, which will, however, follow quite naturally from what we have already discussed in previous didactics lessons.

You know that much is now expected of so-called experimental psychology in the field of education. Experiments are being conducted on people to determine how gifted they may be in terms of concept formation, memory, and now also for volition, although this can naturally only be ascertained indirectly, since volition takes place during sleep and what a person experiences during sleep can only be indirectly observed with the electrical apparatus in the psychological laboratory, just as what a person experiences during sleep cannot be directly observed experimentally. So such experiments are being conducted. Do not think that I have any objection to such experiments as a whole. These experiments can be significant as offshoots of science, as external extensions of science. All kinds of interesting things can be learned through such experiments, and I do not want to condemn them outright. I wish that all those who want to could obtain the means for such psychological laboratories and carry out their experiments there. But we must consider the emergence of this experimental psychology, as recommended in particular by the educator Meumann, who is basically also in the Herbartian school.

Why is experimental psychology being pursued at present? Because we have lost the ability to observe people directly. We can no longer rely on the forces that connect people with each other, including children, on an inner level. We therefore want to use external events and experiments to learn what we need to do with the developing child. As you can see, both our pedagogy and our didactics take a much more inner approach. This is also urgently needed for the present and the near future of humanity. While on the one hand there is a drive toward experimental psychology, on the other hand this experimental psychology is also causing a misunderstanding of certain simple facts of life. I will illustrate this with an example.

In recent times, these experimental psychologists and educators have been particularly interested in what they call the process of perception, for example, the process of perception when reading, when reading any piece of writing. In order to understand this process of perception, attempts have been made to work with test subjects, as they say. What is done in great detail can be summarized briefly as follows. A test subject, a child or an adult, is presented with a piece of writing, and researchers examine what, for example, the child should do first in order to comprehend it most quickly. They conclude that it is most appropriate to first “prepare” the test subject for the piece of writing, that is, to first introduce them to the meaning of such a piece of writing. Then, through numerous experiments, the test subject is led to perform what is called “passive absorption.” So, after the meaning has been explored through disposition, it should be passively absorbed. This passive absorption of a reading passage is intended to bring about what is called “anticipatory learning”: repeating once again, in free mental activity, what was first prepared and then passively absorbed. And then, as the fourth act of this drama, everything that has remained uncertain, i.e., everything that has not yet fully entered into human mental and spiritual life, should be repeated. If, in the correct sequence, the test subject is first allowed to familiarize themselves with the meaning of a piece of reading material, then passively absorb it, then learn by anticipation, then seek out the parts that have not yet been fully understood, then one can see that this is the most effective way to comprehend, read, and retain what has been read. Don't misunderstand me: I am saying this because I have to, in view of the fact that people today talk so much past each other, because you can use the most contradictory words to describe the same thing. Therefore, experimental psychologists will say: such a dedicated method is precisely what one should do in education. But anyone who has a deeper understanding of the life of the whole human being knows that this is not the way to achieve real educational activity — just as dissecting a beetle does not enable one to reassemble the living beetle from its individual parts. That is not possible. Nor is it possible to do this by studying the anatomy of human soul activity. It is interesting and can be extremely fruitful in other respects: studying the anatomy of human soul activity — but it does not make you a pedagogue! That is why this experimental psychology will not, in truth, lead to a new structure of pedagogy; that can only come from an inner understanding of the human being.

I had to say this so that you don't see it in the wrong light when I now utter a sentence that naturally greatly annoys people who cling to contemporary opinions, a sentence that is of course one-sided in its own way, but one that must be complemented in its one-sidedness. What do experimental psychologists gain after they have psychologically dissected or, in fact, quite tortured a test subject in this way — for this procedure is not pleasant when it is done to you — what do they gain from it? They have produced a result that they consider to be extremely significant, which is repeatedly highlighted in educational manuals in bold letters as a conclusion that has been reached. Translated into plain English, this sentence reads something like this: You retain a piece of reading material better if you understand its meaning than if you do not understand its meaning. — To use the language of science, this has been researched: that it is useful to first understand the meaning of a piece of reading material, because then the piece is easier to learn. Now I must utter this heretical sentence: insofar as this sentence is correct, I could have known it beforehand, for I would like to know what person of sound mind would not know for themselves that a piece of writing is better retained when one has understood its meaning than when one has not understood it. — That is, in fact, the point of the findings of experimental psychology, that it brings to light terrible truisms. The obvious truths found in textbooks on experimental psychology are sometimes such that only those who have already trained themselves to accept the exciting alongside the rather boring in scientific work can engage with them. One is already trained to do this when one is drilled in elementary school, because even in elementary school this deficiency is recognized, albeit to a lesser extent, not to mention in college.

This heretical statement applies particularly to educators: that in a certain sense it is self-evident that in order to remember something, one must first understand its meaning. But now something else comes into play: that what one has absorbed in terms of meaning only affects one's perception, only one's thinking and cognition, and that by elevating meaning, one draws people one-sidedly toward merely observing the world, toward thinking and cognition. And if we were to teach solely in accordance with this statement, we would produce people who were all weak-willed. So the sentence is correct in a certain respect, but not completely correct. It would have to be supplemented as follows: If you want to do the very best for the thinking cognition of human beings, then you do so by dissecting the meaning of everything they are to take in. And indeed, if one were to analyze the meaning of everything one-sidedly, one could educate the human view of the world to a very large extent. But one would never educate the willing human being, because one cannot educate the will by bringing the meaning of a thing into the light. The will wants to sleep, and it does not want to be fully awakened in this way, by revealing the meaning everywhere, I would say, in an unchaste manner. And herein lies the fact that the necessity of life simply breaks through this simple truth of revealing meaning, so that we must also do with the child what does not give rise to revealing meaning. Then we educate it to want.

The impropriety in the one-sided application of the revelation of meaning has been particularly evident in movements such as the theosophical movement. You know how much I have argued over the years against a certain impropriety in theosophical circles. I have even had to experience, for example, that “Hamlet,” a pure work of art, has been explained in the language of theosophical trickery: This is Manas, this is the I, that is the astral body; one person is this, the other is that. Such explanations were particularly popular. I have railed against this because it is a sin against human life to interpret symbolically what should be taken directly and elementarily as artistic. This is a misguided way of attributing meaning to things, elevating them to a level of mere contemplation where they do not belong. All this comes from the fact that the actual theosophical movement is a decadent movement. It is the extreme offshoot of a declining culture; it is not something that has anything to do with anthroposophy in its overall attitude. Anthroposophy wants to be the opposite of this: an ascending movement, the beginning of an ascent. That is a radical difference. That is why so much of what is essentially an extreme manifestation of decadence is produced in the field of theosophy. But the fact that there are people who manage to interpret Hamlet symbolically in relation to the individual characters stems from the fact that we have been so terribly poorly educated that we have striven so hard to be educated only in terms of meaning.

Human life makes it necessary that education should not be based solely on meaning, but also on what is experienced by the dormant will: rhythm, beat, melody, the harmony of colors, repetition, and, in general, activity without grasping meaning. If you make the child repeat sentences that it is not yet able to understand at its age, if you make it memorize these sentences purely by heart, then you are not affecting its understanding, because you cannot respond to the meaning, which will only reveal itself later, but you are affecting its will, and that is what you should do, what you must do. On the one hand, you must try to introduce the child to things that are primarily artistic: music, drawing, sculpture, and so on. On the other hand, however, you must also teach the child things that may have meaning in abstract form, in such a way that the child does not understand the meaning at first, but only later in life, because it has absorbed it through repetition and can remember it, and with greater maturity then understands what it could not understand before. You have influenced their will. And in particular, you have also influenced their feelings, and you should not forget that. Just as feeling — both from a spiritual and an intellectual point of view — lies between will and thinking, so too does the educational activity for feeling lie between the measures that must be taken for cognitive thinking and those measures that must be taken for the will and its training. For thinking and cognition, we must certainly do what is necessary to reveal meaning: reading, writing, and so on; for willing and action, we must train everything that does not depend on a mere interpretation of meaning, but on an immediate grasp by the whole human being: artistic activities. What lies between the two will have a preferential effect on the formation of feelings and the formation of the soul. It has a very strong effect on the formation of the mind when the child is enabled to first absorb something purely from memory, without understanding it, without nitpicking at the meaning, even though there is one, so that only after some time, when it has matured through other measures and then remembers it again, can it understand what it absorbed earlier. This is a subtlety in educational activity that must be taken into account if one wants to educate deeply feeling people. For feeling enters into life in a peculiar way. People should also observe in this area. They just don't really observe. I want to give you an observation that you can easily make, albeit with some diligence.

Imagine you are trying to understand Goethe's state of mind in 1790. You can do this if you focus on just a few of the things that Goethe produced in 1790. At the end of every edition of Goethe's works, you will find a chronological list of his poems in the order in which they were written. So you take out the poems he wrote in 1790 and the plays he wrote in that year, and you look at them. You remember that he had just completed his beautiful treatise “The Metamorphosis of Plants” that year; you remember that he had just conceived the first idea for his “Theory of Colors”; you recall from all this his state of mind in 1790 and ask yourself: What was going on in Goethe's inner life in 1790? You will only be able to answer that question if you take a close look at everything that preceded Goethe in the years from 1749 to 1790 and what followed after that year – what Goethe did not yet know at that time, but what you now know – in the period from 1790 to 1832, that is, until his death. Then the remarkable experience emerges that the current state of mind in 1790 is a combination of what the person wants to acquire later and what he has already experienced before. This is an extremely significant observation. People shy away from it only because it leads into areas that, understandably, one does not like to venture into for such observations. Try to extend your observation in this way to the soul life of a person who has recently died and whom you have known for a long time. If you train yourself to observe the soul more finely, you will experience the following. A person who was a friend to you died, let's say in 1918. You had known him for a long time, so you can ask yourself: What was his state of mind in 1912? If you take into account everything you know about him, you will find that his soul mood in 1912 was such that the preparation for his imminent death unconsciously played into his soul mood at that time; it unconsciously played into his emotional life. And I call the emotional life, taken as a whole, the soul mood. A person who is about to die has a completely different mood than someone who will live for a long time.

Now you will understand that people do not like to observe these things, because it makes a rather unpleasant impression, to say the least, when one notices that a person's mood expresses their imminent death. That is indeed the case. But it is also not good for ordinary life for people to notice such things. Therefore, it is usually as removed from this life as the will, when asleep, is removed from waking consciousness. But the educator must, in a sense, step out of ordinary life. He must not shy away from standing beside his ordinary life and taking in truths for his pedagogical activity that also have something shocking, something tragic for ordinary life. In this respect, something needs to be made up for, especially in Central European education. You know that in earlier decades of Central European education and teaching, high school teachers in particular were still personalities whom the actual cosmopolitan looked down on with a certain haughtiness. Unworldly, pedantic people who could not quite fit into the world, who always wore long coats and never tuxedos, and so on—these were the former educators of youth, especially of more mature youth. Things have changed in recent times. University professors have begun to wear proper tuxedos, to fit into the world, so to speak, and it is considered a great step forward that the former state of affairs has finally been overcome. That is good. But it must also be overcome in another direction, it must be overcome in the future so that the juxtaposition with life does not consist merely, as it did in the past, of the educator always appearing in a long pedantic skirt when other people were wearing tuxedos. The juxtaposition with life can remain in a certain way, but it should be connected with a deeper view of life than can be absorbed by those who wear tuxedos for certain purposes. I am speaking figuratively, of course, because I have nothing against tuxedos.

An educator must be able to view life more deeply, otherwise he will never be able to treat the developing human being appropriately and fruitfully. Therefore, he will also have to accept truths such as the one just characterized. Life itself demands, in a certain sense, that it also contain secrets. Certainly, we do not need diplomatic secrets for the immediate future. But we do need knowledge of certain secrets of life for education. The ancient mystery teachers kept such secrets of life esoteric because they could not be handed over directly to life. But in a certain sense, every teacher must have truths that he cannot immediately communicate to the world, because the world that lives outside, without the task of educating, would be misled in its robust steps if it approached such truths on a daily basis. But you do not fully understand how to treat the developing child if you are not able to judge: what effect does something have on the child when you communicate it to him in such a way that he does not yet fully understand it at his present level of maturity, but will understand it when you come back to it later and can then explain to him not only what he perceives now, but what he has already absorbed earlier. This has a very strong effect on the mind. Therefore, every good school should follow the practice of keeping teachers with their students for as long as possible: taking them on in the first grade, keeping them in the second grade, continuing with them in the third grade, and so on, as far as the external facilities allow. And the teacher who has had the eighth grade this year should then take over the first grade again next year. For sometimes it is necessary to be able to return, after years, to what one has instilled in the children's souls years ago. Under all circumstances, the development of the mind suffers when children are handed over to a different teacher every year who does not continue what he has instilled in the children in previous years. It is part of the didactics of teaching that the teacher progresses through the school grades with the students. Only in this way can one respond to the rhythm of life. And life has a rhythm in the broadest sense. This is already evident in everyday activities, and again in everyday life. If you have become accustomed, for example, to eating a buttered roll every day at half past ten in the morning for just one week, then you will probably be hungry for the buttered roll at this time in the second week. That's how much the human organism runs on a rhythm. But it's not just the external organism; the whole person is predisposed to rhythm. That's why it's also good to be able to see rhythmic repetition in the overall course of life—and that's what you have to deal with when you raise and teach children. That is why it is good to remember how even every year you can return to very specific educational motifs. So choose things to go through with the children, make a note of them, and come back to something similar every year. Even with more abstract things, this can be adhered to. You teach, I would say — in a way that is appropriate for the child's mind — addition in the first year of school, you come back to addition in the second year of school and teach more about it; in the third year, you come back to it again. So that the same act is repeated, only in progressive repetitions.

This attunement to the rhythm of life is of particular importance for all education and teaching, much more important than the constant emphasis: You should design all lessons in a meaningful way, so that you unchastely reveal everything that is contained in what is presented. —- One can only guess at what is required of one if one gradually develops a feeling for life. But then, as an educator, one will move very far away from what is often sought today in an external way, precisely through experimentation, even in education. Again, not to condemn, but to be able to improve certain things that are detrimental to our intellectual culture, I emphasize such things. Today, you can find educational manuals that incorporate the results of experiments on memory conducted with test subjects. The test subjects are treated in a rather strange way. They try to determine how they can retain something they have absorbed with their senses; then they write down words in succession that make no sense in context, let them absorb them, and so on. These experiments to determine the laws of memory are being conducted on a very large scale today. Once again, something has emerged that is now being recorded in scientific form in sentences. Just as, for example, Gay-Lussac's law or others are recorded in physics, so too do they want to record such laws in experimental pedagogy or psychology. There you will find, for example, a very scholarly discussion of what is said with reference to a certain scientific longing, which is quite justified, that there are forms of memory: first, memory that is easy or difficult to acquire, and second, memory that is easy or difficult to reproduce. So, first, a test subject is tortured to find out that there are people who acquire knowledge easily and those who acquire it with difficulty, then other test subjects are tortured to find out that there are people who recall what they have learned easily or with difficulty. Now it has been researched that there are forms of memory that show easy or difficult acquisition, then those that show easy or difficult recall, the reproduction of what has been absorbed. Thirdly, there are forms of memory that can be described as faithful and accurate; fourthly, there is extensive memory; fifthly, there is permanent or sufficient memory, as opposed to memory that is easily forgotten. — This corresponds very well to the desire for systematization in today's science. We now have the scientific results. We can say: What has been scientifically researched in exact psychology about the forms of memory? And we know: First, there is a form of memory that is easy or difficult to acquire; second, one that is easy or difficult to reproduce; third, there is a faithful or accurate memory as opposed to an unfaithful or inaccurate memory; fourth, an extensive memory, that is, people who can retain large pieces of reading material as opposed to those who can only retain small pieces; fifth, a lasting memory that may still retain things after years, as opposed to one that forgets quickly.

Despite all due respect for the scientific approach, which devotedly and very conscientiously mistreats countless test subjects, working in the most astute manner to arrive at its results, so that now, in pedagogy, after it has also been found in children through experimental psychology, we now know which different forms of memory can be distinguished, despite all due respect for such science, I would like to say: Anyone with a little common sense knows that there are people who find it easy or difficult to acquire knowledge, easy or difficult to remember things, then there are those who recount things faithfully and accurately, in contrast to those who muddle everything up when they retell something; that there are people with an extensive memory who can take in a long story, as opposed to those who can only remember a short one, and that there are also people who can remember something for a long time, for years, and those who have forgotten everything after eight days? This is a fairly old piece of common sense wisdom! But it is being researched again in a science that commands respect, because the methods used in it are very ingenious, there is no denying that.

Now, two things can be said: First, it is better to cultivate common sense in teaching and education than to engage in such experimentation, which may develop one's acumen very strongly, but will not bring one closer to the individuality of children. But one can also say it differently: It is actually quite unfortunate in our age that we must assume that those who are to become teachers and educators have so little common sense that they must first learn through great detours that there are different types of memory, as we have now mentioned. These things must also be regarded as symptoms of what has become of our intellectual culture.

I had to draw your attention to these things. For you will experience that people will say to you: Well, you let yourselves be taken in by this Waldorf school. It is a completely amateurish institution that doesn't even want to know about the greatest achievement of our time: the experimental psychological method. The approach to this experimental psychological method is professional, but what is being driven didactically at the Waldorf school is pure quackery! — You will have to realize that sometimes you will need to recognize the relationship between science — which should not be respected any less — and what must be built on an inner pedagogy and didactics, which then, however, establishes an inner, loving engagement with the child in contrast to the external relationships that one learns about through experimentation. Certainly, the latter has not yet completely disappeared; it even prevails more than one might think. But it definitely prevails against what scientific pedagogy is increasingly striving for. In a certain sense, it is also true that scientific activity can destroy a great deal in the present, but that it does not have the power to drive out all common sense. And we want to build on this common sense, which, if cultivated in the right way, will create an inner relationship to what should happen in the classroom. We must become aware that we are living at the dawn of a new age and must thoroughly comprehend this fact. Until the middle of the 15th century, the legacy of the Greek and Latin-Roman periods continued to have an impact. After the middle of the 15th century, this is only something that lingers on. But those who live in this lingering have, in certain lower strata of their consciousness, a tendency to return again and again to the Greek-Latin era, which can be fully admired in its place, but whose continuation no longer lives in our time. Just think how self-satisfied people who have learned something become today when they can explain to you: those who educate properly must not only look at the rhythm and rhyme of poems, they must comment on them appropriately, introduce them to the meaning, and only when one has introduced them to the meaning appropriately will one also achieve what people should take up as an activity. For such a person will say, after having long taught how to start from the meaning, as the ancient Latin saying goes: Rem tene, verba sequuntur... If you have understood the matter, the words will follow of their own accord. — This is a tactical behavior that you will often find today in people who believe they have learned a great deal, who believe they have gone far beyond dilettantism, by first lecturing on something as high contemporary wisdom and then saying afterwards: Even the ancient Latin scholars said... — And if they can say it in Greek, then people believe even more that it is something very special. It was good to behave this way in the fourth post-Atlantic cultural era, but it is not appropriate for our era. The Greeks did not first send their children to ancient gymnasiums, where they would have learned ancient Egyptian, for example; they had them learn the Greek language. Today, however, we proceed by first introducing people to ancient languages. There is something here that must be understood.