Steiner: Child Education
The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy
Much that the man of to-day inherits from generations of the past is called in question
by his present life. Hence the numerous ?problems of the hour? and ?demands of the age.? How
many of these are occupying the attention of the world ? the Social Question,
the Women's Question, the various educational questions, hygienic questions,
questions of human rights, and so forth! By the most varied means, men are
endeavouring to grapple with these problems. The number of those who come on
the scene with this or that remedy or programme for the solution ? or at any
rate for the partial solution ? of one or other of them, is indeed past
counting. In the process, all manner of opinions and shades of opinion make
themselves felt ? Radicalism, which carries itself with a revolutionary air;
the Moderate attitude, full of respect for existing things, yet endeavouring
to evolve out of them something new; Conservatism, which is up in arms
whenever any of the old institutions are tampered with. Beside these main
tendencies of thought and feeling there is every kind of intermediate
position.
Looking at all these
things of life with deeper vision, one cannot but feel ? indeed the impression
forces itself upon one ? that the men of our age are in the position of trying
to meet the demands involved in modern life with means which are utterly
inadequate. Many are setting about to reform life, without really knowing life
in its foundations. But he who would make proposals as to the future must not
content himself with a knowledge of life that merely touches life's surface.
He must investigate its depths.
Life in its entirety is
like a plant. The plant contains not only what it offers to external life; it
also holds a future state within its hidden depths. One who has before him a
plant only just in leaf, knows very well that after some time there will be
flowers and fruit also on the leaf-bearing stem. In its hidden depths the
plant already contains the flowers and fruit in embryo; yet by mere
investigation of what the plant now offers to external vision, how should one
ever tell what these new organs will look like? This can only be told by one
who has learnt to know the very nature and being of the plant.
So, too, the whole of
human life contains within it the germs of its own future; but if we are to
tell anything about this future, we must first penetrate into the hidden
nature of the human being. And this our age is little inclined to do. It
concerns itself with the things that appear on the surface, and thinks it is
treading on unsafe ground if called upon to penetrate to what escapes external
observation.
In the case of the plant
the matter is certainly more simple. We know that others like it have again
and again borne fruit before. Human life is present only once; the flowers it
will bear in the future have never yet been there. Yet they are present within
man in the embryo, even as the flowers are present in a plant that is still
only in leaf. And there is a possibility of saying something about man's
future, if once we penetrate beneath the surface of human nature to its real
essence and being. It is only when fertilized by this deep penetration into
human life, that the various ideas of reform current in the present age can
become fruitful and practical.
Anthroposophy, by its
inherent character and tendency, must have the task of providing a practical
conception of the world ? one that comprehends the nature and essence of human
life. Whether what is often called so is justified in making such a claim, is
not the point; it is the real essence of Anthroposophy ? and what, by virtue
of its real essence, Anthroposophy can be ? that here concerns us. For
Anthroposophy is not intended as a theory remote from life, one that merely
caters for man's curiosity or thirst for knowledge. Nor is it intended as an
instrument for a few people, who for selfish reasons would like to attain a
higher level of development for themselves. No, it can join and work at the
most important tasks of present-day humanity, and further their development
for the welfare of mankind. (See
Footnote 1)
It is true that in taking
on this mission, Anthroposophy must be prepared to face all kinds of
scepticism and opposition. Radicals, Moderates and Conservatives in every
sphere of life will be bound to meet it with scepticism. For in its beginnings
it will scarcely be in a position to please any party. Its premises lie far
beyond the sphere of party movements, being founded, in effect, purely and
solely on a true knowledge and perception of life. If a man has knowledge of
life, it is only out of life itself that he will be able to set himself his
tasks. He will draw up no arbitrary programmes, for he will know that no other
fundamental laws of life can prevail in the future than those that prevail
already in the present. The spiritual investigator will therefore of necessity
respect existing things. However great the need for improvement he may find in
them, he will not fail to see, in existing things themselves, the embryo of
the future. At the same time, he knows that in all things ?becoming? there
must be growth and evolution. Hence he will perceive in the present the seeds
of transformation and of growth. He invents no programmes; he reads them out
of what is there. What he thus reads becomes in a certain sense itself a
programme, for it bears in it the essence of development. For this very reason
an anthroposophical insight into the being of man must provide the most
fruitful and the most practical means for the solution of the urgent questions
of modern life.
In the following pages we
shall endeavour to prove this for one particular question ? the question of
Education. We shall not set up demands nor programmes, but simply describe the
child-nature. From the nature of the growing and evolving human being, the
proper point of view for Education will, as it were, spontaneously result.
IF WE wish to perceive the
nature of the evolving man, we must begin by considering the hidden nature of
man as such. What sense-observation learns to know in man, and what the
materialistic conception of life would consider as the one and only element in
man's being, is for spiritual investigation only one part, one member of his
nature: it is his Physical Body. This physical body of man is subject to the
same laws of physical existence, and is built up of the same substances and
forces, as the whole of that world which is commonly called lifeless.
Anthroposophical Science says, therefore: man has a physical body in common
with the whole of the mineral kingdom. And it designates as the ?Physical
Body? that alone in man, which brings the substances into mixture,
combination, form, and dissolution by the same laws as arc at work in the same
substances in the mineral world as well.
Now over and above the
physical body, Anthroposophical Science recognizes a second essential
principle in man. It is his Life-Body or Etheric Body. The physicist need not
take offence at the term ?Etheric Body.? The word ?Ether? in this connection
does not mean the same as the hypothetical Ether of Physics. It must be taken
simply as a designation of what will here and now be described. In recent
times it was considered a highly unscientific proceeding to speak of such an
?Etheric Body?; though this had not been so at the end of the eighteenth and
in the first half of the nineteenth century. In that earlier time people had
said to themselves: the substances and forces which are at work in a mineral
cannot of their own accord form the mineral into a living creature. In the
latter there must also be inherent a peculiar ?force.? This force they called
the ?Vital Force,? and they thought of it somewhat as follows: the Vital Force
is working in the plant, in the animal, in the human body, and produces the
phenomena of life, just as the magnetic force is present in the magnet
producing the phenomena of attraction. In the succeeding period of
materialism, this idea was set aside. People began to say: the living creature
is built up in the same way as the lifeless creation. There are no
other forces at work in the living organism than in the mineral; the same
forces are only working in a more complicated way, and building a more complex
structure.
To-day, however, it is
only the most rigid materialists who hold fast to this denial of a life-force
or vital force. There are a number of natural scientists and thinkers whom the
facts of life have taught, that something like a vital force or life-principle
must be assumed. Thus modern science, in its later developments, is in a
certain sense approaching what Anthroposophical Science has to say about the
life-body. There is, however, a very important difference. From the facts of
sense-perception, modern science arrives, through intellectual considerations
or reflections, at the assumption of a kind of vital force. This is not the
method of genuine spiritual investigation which Anthroposophy adopts and from
the results of which it makes its statements. It cannot often enough be
emphasized how great is the difference, in this respect, between Anthroposophy
and the current science of to-day. For the latter regards the experiences of
the senses as the foundation for all knowledge. Anything that cannot be built
up on this foundation, it takes to be unknowable. From the impressions of the
senses it draws deductions and conclusions. What goes on beyond them it
rejects, as lying ?beyond the frontiers of human knowledge.?
From the standpoint of
Anthroposophical Science, such a view is like that of a blind man, who only
admits as valid things that can be touched and conclusions that result by
deduction from the world of touch ? a blind man who rejects the statements of
seeing people as lying outside the possibility of human knowledge.
Anthroposophy shows man to be capable of evolution, capable of bringing new
worlds within his sphere by the development of new organs of perception.
Colour and light are all around the blind man. If he cannot see them, it is
only because he lacks the organs of perception. In like manner Anthroposophy
asserts: there are many worlds around man, and man can perceive them if only
he develops the necessary organs. As the blind man who has undergone a
successful operation looks out upon a new world, so by the development of
higher organs man can come to know new worlds ? worlds altogether different
from those which his ordinary senses allow him to perceive.
Now whether one who is
blind in body can be operated on or not, depends on the constitution of his
organs. But the higher organs whereby man can penetrate into the higher
worlds, are present in embryo in every human being. Everyone can develop them
who has the patience, endurance, and energy to apply in his own case the
methods described in the volume, ?Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its
Attainment.?
Anthroposophical Science,
then, would never say that there are definite frontiers to human knowledge.
What it would rather say is that for man those worlds exist, for which he has
the organs of perception. Thus Anthroposophy speaks only of the methods
whereby existing frontiers may be extended; and this is its position with
regard to the investigation of the life-body or etheric body, and of all that
is specified in the following pages as the yet higher members of man's nature.
Anthroposophy admits that the physical body alone is accessible to
investigation through the bodily senses, and that ? from the point of view of
this kind of investigation ? it will at most be possible by intellectual
deductions to surmise the existence of a higher body. At the same time, it
tells how it is possible to open up a world wherein these higher members of
man's nature emerge for the observer, as the colour and the light of things
emerge after operation in the case of a man born blind. For those who have
developed the higher organs of perception, the etheric or life-body is an
object of perception and not merely of intellectual deduction.
Man has this etheric or
life-body in common with the plants and animals. The life-body works in a
formative way upon the substances and forces of the physical body, thus
bringing about the phenomena of growth, reproduction, and inner movement of
the saps and fluids. It is therefore the builder and moulder of the physical
body, its inhabitant and architect. The physical body may even be spoken of as
an image or expression of the life-body. In man the two are nearly, though by
no means wholly, equal as to form and size. In the animals, however, and still
more so in the plants, the etheric body is very different, both in form and in
extension, from the physical.
The third member of the
human body is what is called the Sentient or Astral Body. It is the vehicle of
pain and pleasure, of impulse, craving, passion, and the like ? all of which
are absent in a creature consisting only of physical and etheric bodies. These
things may all be included in the term: sentient feeling or sensation. The
plant has no sensation. If in our time some learned men, seeing that plants
will respond by movement or in some other way to external stimulus, conclude
that plants have a certain power of sensation, they only show their ignorance
of what sensation is. The point is not whether, the creature responds to an
external stimulus, but whether the stimulus is reflected in an inner
process ? as pain or pleasure, impulse, desire, or the like. Unless we held
fast to this criterion, we should be justified in saying that blue
litmus-paper has a sensation of certain substances, because it turns red by
contact with them. (See
Footnote 2)
Man has therefore a
sentient body in common with the animal kingdom only, and this sentient body
is the vehicle of sensation or of sentient life.
We must not fall into the
error of certain theosophical circles, and imagine the etheric and sentient
bodies as consisting simply of finer substances than are present in the
physical body. For that would be a materialistic conception of these higher
members of man's nature. The etheric body is a force-form; it consists of
active forces, and not of matter. The astral or sentient body is a figure of
inwardly moving, coloured, luminous pictures. The astral body deviates, both
in shape and size, from the physical body. In man it presents an elongated
ovoid form, within which the physical and etheric bodies are embedded. It
projects beyond them ? a vivid, luminous figure ? on every side. (See
Footnote 3)
Now man possesses a fourth
member of his being; and this fourth member he shares with no other earthly
creature. It is the vehicle of the human ? I ,? of the human Ego. The little
word ? I ? ? as used, for example, in the English language ? is a name
essentially different from all other names. To anyone who ponders rightly on
the nature of this name, there is opened up at once a way of approach to a
perception of man's real nature. All other names can be applied, by all men
equally, to the thing they designate. Everyone can call a table ?table,? and
everyone can call a chair ?chair?; but it is not so with the name ? I .? No
one can use this name to designate another. Each human being can only call
himself ? I ?; the name ? I ? can never reach my ear as a designation of
myself. In designating himself as ? I ,? man has to name himself within
himself. A being who can say ? I ? to himself is a world in himself. Those
religions which are founded on spiritual knowledge have always had a feeling
for this truth. Hence they have said: With the ? I ,? the ?God? ? who in the
lower creatures reveals himself only from without, in the phenomena of the
surrounding world ? begins to speak from within. The vehicle of this faculty
of saying ? I ,? of the Ego-faculty, is the ?Body of the Ego,? the fourth
member of the human being. (See
Footnote 4)
This ?Body of the Ego? is
the vehicle of the higher soul of man. Through it man is the crown of all
earthly creation. Now in the human being of the present day the Ego is by no
means simple in character. We may recognize its nature if we compare human
beings at different stages of development. Look at the uneducated savage
beside the average European, or again, compare the latter with a lofty
idealist. Each one of them has the faculty of saying ? I ? to himself; the
?Body of the Ego? is present in them all. But the uneducated savage, with his
Ego, follows his passions, impulses, and cravings almost like an animal. The
more highly developed man says to himself, ?Such and such impulses and desires
you may follow,? while others again he holds in check or suppresses
altogether. The idealist has developed new impulses and new desires in
addition to those originally present. All this has taken place through the Ego
working upon the other members of the human being. Indeed, it is this which
constitutes the special task of the Ego. Working outward from itself, it has
to ennoble and purify the other members of man's nature.
In the human being who has
reached beyond the condition in which the external world first placed him, the
lower members have become changed to a greater or lesser degree under the
influence of the ?Ego.? When man is only beginning to rise above the animal,
when his ?Ego? is only just kindled, he is still like an animal so far as the
lower members of his being are concerned. His etheric or life-body is simply
the vehicle of the formative forces of life, the forces of growth and
reproduction. His sentient body gives expression to those impulses, desires,
and passions only, which are stimulated by external nature. As man works his
way up from this stage of development, through successive lives or
incarnations, to an ever higher evolution, his ?Ego? works upon the other
members and transforms them. In this way his sentient body becomes the vehicle
of purified sensations of pleasure and pain, refined wishes and desires. And
the etheric or life-body also becomes transformed. It becomes the vehicle of
the man's habits, of his more permanent bent or tendency in life, of his
temperament and of his memory. A man whose Ego has not yet worked upon his
life-body, has no memory of the experiences he goes through in life. He just
lives out what Nature has implanted in him.
This is what the growth
and development of civilization means for man. It is a continual working of
his Ego upon the lower members of his nature. The work penetrates right down
into the physical body. Under the influence of the Ego, the whole appearance
and physiognomy, the gestures and movements of the physical body, are altered.
It is possible, moreover, to distinguish the way in which the different means
of culture or civilization work upon the several members of man's nature. The
ordinary factors of civilization work upon the sentient body and imbue it with
pleasures and pains, with impulses and cravings, of a different kind from what
it had originally. Again, when the human being is absorbed in the
contemplation of a great work of art, his etheric body is being influenced.
Through the work of art he divines something higher and more noble than is
offered by the ordinary environment of his senses, and in this process he is
forming and transforming his life-body. Religion is a powerful means for the
purification and ennobling of the etheric body. It is here that the religious
impulses have their mighty purpose in the evolution of mankind.
What we call ?conscience?
is nothing else than the outcome of the work of the Ego on the life-body
through incarnation after incarnation. When man begins to perceive that he
ought not to do this or that, and when this perception makes so strong an
impression on him that the impression passes on into his etheric body,
?conscience? arises.
Now this work of the Ego
upon the lower members may either be something that is proper to a whole race
of men; or else it may be entirely individual, an achievement of the
individual Ego working on itself alone. In the former case, the whole human
race collaborates, as it were, in the transformation of the human being. The
latter kind of transformation depends on the activity of the individual Ego
alone and of itself. The Ego may become so strong as to transform, by its very
own power and strength, the sentient body. What the Ego then makes of the
Sentient or Astral Body is called ?Spirit-Self? (or by an Eastern expression,
?Manas?). This transformation is wrought mainly through a process of learning,
through an enriching of one's inner life with higher ideas and perceptions.
Now the Ego can rise to a
still higher task, and it is one that belongs quite essentially to its nature.
This happens when not only is the astral body enriched, but the etheric or
life-body transformed. A man learns many things m the course of his life; and
if from some point he looks back on his past life, he may say to himself: ?I
have learned much.? But in a far less degree will he be able to speak of a
transformation in his temperament or character during life, or of an
improvement or deterioration in his memory. Learning concerns the astral body,
whereas the latter kinds of transformation concern the etheric or life-body.
Hence it is by no means an unhappy image if we compare the change in the
astral body during life with the course of the minute hand of a clock, and the
transformation of the life-body with the course of the hour hand.
When man enters on a
higher training ? or, as it is called, occult training ? it is above all
important for him to undertake, out of the very own power of his Ego, this
latter transformation. Individually and with full consciousness, he has to
work out the transformation of his habits and his temperament, his character,
his memory ... In so far as he thus works into his life-body, he transforms it
into what is called in anthroposophical terminology, ?Life-Spirit? (or, as the
Eastern expression has it, ?Budhi?).
At a still higher stage
man comes to acquire forces whereby he is able to work upon his physical body
and transform it (transforming, for example, the circulation of the blood, the
pulse). As much of the physical body as is thus transformed is ?Spirit-Man?
(or, in the Eastern term, ?Atma?).
Now as a member of the
whole human species or of some section of it ? for example, of a nation,
tribe, or family ? man also achieves certain transformations of the lower
parts of his nature. In Anthroposophical Science the results of this latter
kind of transformation are known by the following names. The astral or
sentient body, transformed through the Ego, is called the Sentient Soul; the
transformed etheric body is called the Intellectual Soul; and the transformed
physical body the Spiritual Soul. We must not imagine the transformations of
these three members taking place one after another in time. From the moment
when the Ego lights up, all three bodies are undergoing transformation
simultaneously. Indeed, the work of the Ego does not become clearly
perceptible to man until a part of the Spiritual Soul has already been formed
and developed.
FROM what has been said,
it is clear that we may speak of four members of man's nature: the Physical
Body, the Etheric or Life-Body, the Astral or Sentient Body, and the Body of
the Ego. The Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul, and the Spiritual Soul, and
beyond these the still higher members of man's nature ? Spirit-Self,
Life-Self, Spirit-Man ? appear in connection with these four members as
products of transformation. Speaking of the vehicles of the qualities of man,
it is in fact the first four members only which come into account.
It is on these four
members of the human being that the educator works. Hence, if we desire to
work in the right way, we must investigate the nature of these parts of man.
It must not be imagined that they develop uniformly in the human being, so
that at any given point in his life ? the moment of birth, for example ? they
are all equally far developed. This is not the case; their development takes
place differently in the different ages of a man's life. The right foundation
for education, and for teaching also, consists in a knowledge of these laws of
development of human nature.
Before physical birth, the
growing human being is surrounded on all sides by the physical body of
another. He does not come into independent contact with the physical world.
The physical body of his mother is his environment, and this body alone can
work upon him as he grows and ripens. Physical birth indeed consists in this,
that the physical mother-body, which has been as a protecting sheath, sets the
human being free, thus enabling the environment of the physical world
thenceforward to work upon him directly. His senses open to the external
world, and the external world thereby gains that influence on the human being
which was previously exercised by the physical envelope of the mother-body.
A spiritual understanding
of the world, as represented by Anthroposophy, sees in this process the birth
of the physical body, but not as yet of the etheric or life-body. Even as man
is surrounded, until the moment of birth, by the physical envelope of the
mother-body, so until the time of the change of teeth ? until about the
seventh year ? he is surrounded by an etheric envelope and by an astral
envelope. It is only during the change of teeth that the etheric envelope
liberates the etheric body. And an astral envelope remains until the time of
puberty, when the astral or sentient body also becomes free on all sides, even
as the physical body became free at physical birth and the etheric body at the
change of teeth. (See
Footnote 5)
Thus, Anthroposophical
Science has to speak of three births of the human being. Until the change of
teeth, certain impressions intended for the etheric body can as little reach
it as the light and air of the physical world can reach the physical body so
long as this latter is resting in the mother's womb.
Before the change of teeth
takes place, the free life-body is not yet at work in man. As in the body of
the mother the physical body receives forces which are not its own, while at
the same time it gradually develops its own forces within the protecting
sheath of the mother's womb, so it is with the forces of growth until the
change of teeth. During this first period the etheric body is only developing
and moulding its own forces, con jointly with those ? not its own ? which it
has inherited. Now while the etheric body is thus working its way into
liberation, the physical body is already independent. The etheric body, as it
liberates itself, develops and works out what it has to give to the physical
body. The ?second teeth,? i.e. the human being's own teeth, taking the place
of those which he inherited, represent the culmination of this work. They are
the densest things embedded in the physical body, and hence they appear last,
at the end of this period.
From this point onward,
the growth of man's physical body is brought about by his own etheric body
alone. But this etheric body is still under the influence of an astral body
which has not yet escaped from its protecting sheath. At the moment when the
astral body too becomes free, the etheric body concludes another period of its
development; and this conclusion finds expression in puberty. The organs of
reproduction become independent because from this time onward the astral body
is free, no longer working inwards, but openly and without integument meeting
the external world.
Now just as the physical
influences of the external world cannot be brought to bear on the yet unborn
child ? so until the change of teeth one should not bring to bear on the
etheric body those forces which are, for it, what the impressions of the
physical environment are for the physical body. And in the astral body the
corresponding influences should not be given play until after puberty.
Vague and general phrases
? ?the harmonious development of all the powers and talents in the child,? and
so forth ? cannot provide the basis for a genuine art of education. Such an
art of education can only be built up on a real knowledge of the human being.
Not that these phrases are incorrect, but that at bottom they are as useless
as it would be to say of a machine that all its parts must be brought
harmoniously into action. To work a machine you must approach it, not with
phrases and truisms, but with real and detailed knowledge. So for the art of
education it is a knowledge of the members of man's being and of their several
development which is important. We must know on what part of the human being
we have especially to work at a certain age, and how we can work upon it in
the proper way. There is of course no doubt that a truly realistic art of
education, such as is here indicated, will only slowly make its way. This
lies, indeed, in the whole mentality of our age, which will long continue to
regard the facts of the spiritual world as the vapourings of an imagination
run wild, while it takes vague and altogether unreal phrases for the result of
a realistic way of thinking. Here, however, we shall unreservedly describe
what will in time to come be a matter of common knowledge, though many to-day
may still regard it as a figment of the mind.
With physical birth the
physical human body is exposed to the physical environment of the external
world. Before birth it was surrounded by the protecting envelope of the
mother's body. What the forces and fluids of the enveloping mother-body have
done for it hitherto, must from now onward be done for it by the forces and
elements of the external physical world. Now before the change of teeth in the
seventh year, the human body has a task to perform upon itself which is
essentially different from the tasks of all the other periods of life. In this
period the physical organs must mould themselves into definite shapes. Their
whole structural nature must receive certain tendencies and directions. In the
later periods also, growth takes place; but throughout the whole succeeding
life, growth is based on the forms which were developed in this first
life-period. If true forms were developed, true forms will grow; if misshapen
forms were developed, misshapen forms will grow. We can never repair what we
have neglected as educators in the first seven years. Just as Nature brings
about the right environment for the physical human body before birth, so after
birth the educator must provide for the right physical environment. It is the
right physical environment alone, which works upon the child in such a way
that the physical organs shape themselves aright.
There are two magic words
which indicate how the child enters into relation with his environment. They
are: Imitation, and Example. The Greek philosopher Aristotle called man the
most imitative of creatures. For no age in life is this more true than for the
first stage of childhood, before the change of teeth. What goes on in his
physical environment, this the child imitates, and in the process of imitation
his physical organs are cast into the forms which then become permanent.
?Physical environment? must, however, be taken in the widest imaginable sense.
It includes not only what goes on around the child in the material sense, but
everything that takes place in the child's environment ? everything that can
be perceived by his senses, that can work from the surrounding physical space
upon the inner powers of the child. This includes all the moral or immoral
actions, all the wise or foolish actions, that the child sees.
It is not moral talk or
prudent admonitions that influence the child in this sense. Rather is it what
the grown-up people do visibly before his eyes. The effect of admonition is to
mould the forms, not of the physical, but of the etheric body; and the latter,
as we saw, is surrounded until the seventh year by a protecting etheric
envelope, even as the physical body is surrounded before physical birth by the
physical envelope of the mother-body. All that has to evolve in the etheric
body before the seventh year ? ideas, habits, memory, and so forth ? all this
must develop ?of its own accord,? just as the eyes and ears develop within the
mother-body without the influence of external light ... What we read in that
excellent educational work ? Jean Paul's ?Levana? or ?Science of Education? ?
is undoubtedly true. He says that a traveler will have learned more from his
nurse in the first years of his life, than in all his journeys round
the world. The child, however, does not learn by instruction or admonition,
but by imitation. The physical organs shape their forms through the influence
of the physical environment. Good sight will be developed in the child if his
environment has the right conditions of light and colour, while in the brain
and blood-circulation the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy
moral sense if the child sees moral actions in his environment. If before his
seventh year the child sees only foolish actions in his surroundings, the
brain will assume such forms as adapt it also to foolishness in later life.
As the muscles of the hand
grow firm and strong in performing the work for which they are fitted, so the
brain and other organs of the physical body of man are guided into the right
lines of development if they receive the right impression from their
environment. An example will best illustrate this point. You can make a doll
for a child by folding up an old napkin, making two comers into legs, the
other two corners into arms, a knot for the head, and painting eyes, nose and
mouth with blots of ink. Or else you can buy the child what they call a
?pretty? doll, with real hair and painted cheeks. We need not dwell on the
fact that the ?pretty? doll is of course hideous, and apt to spoil the healthy
aesthetic sense for a lifetime. The main educational question is a different
one. If the child has before him the folded napkin, he has to fill in from his
own imagination all that is needed to make it real and human. This work of the
imagination moulds and builds the forms of the brain. The brain unfolds as the
muscles of the hand unfold when they do the work for which they are fitted.
Give the child the so-called ?pretty? doll, and the brain has nothing more to
do. Instead of unfolding, it becomes stunted and dried up. If people could
look into the brain as the spiritual investigator can, and see how it builds
its forms, they would assuredly give their children only such toys as are
fitted to stimulate and vivify its formative activity. Toys with dead
mathematical forms alone, have a desolating and killing effect upon the
formative forces of the child. On the other hand everything that kindles the
imagination of living things works in the right way. Our materialistic age
produces few good toys. What a healthy toy it is, for example, which
represents by movable wooden figures two smiths facing each other and
hammering an anvil. The like can still be bought in country districts.
Excellent also are the picture-books where the figures can be set in motion by
pulling threads from below, so that the child itself can transform the dead
picture into a representation of living action. All this brings about a living
mobility of the organs, and by such mobility the right forms of the organs are
built up.
These things can of course
only be touched on here, but in future Anthroposophy will be called upon to
give the necessary indications in detail, and this it is in a position to do.
For it is no empty abstraction, but a body of living facts which can give
guiding lines for the conduct of life's realities.
A few more examples may be
given. A ?nervous,? that is to say excitable child, should be treated
differently as regards environment from one who is quiet and lethargic.
Everything comes into consideration, from the colour of the room and the
various objects that are generally around the child, to the colour of the
clothes in which he is dressed. One will often do the wrong thing if one does
not take guidance from spiritual knowledge. For in many cases the
materialistic idea will hit on the exact reverse of what is right. An
excitable child should be surrounded by and dressed in the red or
reddish-yellow colours, whereas for a lethargic child one should have recourse
to the blue or bluish-green shades of colour. For the important thing is the
complementary colour, which is created within the child. In the case of red it
is green, and in the case of blue orange-yellow, as may easily be seen by
looking for a time at a red or blue surface and then quickly directing one's
gaze to a white surface. The physical organs of the child create this contrary
or complementary colour, and it is this which brings about the corresponding
organic structures that the child needs. If the excitable child has a red
colour around him, he will inwardly create the opposite, the green; and this
activity of creating green has a calming effect. The organs assume a tendency
to calmness.
There is one thing that
must be thoroughly and fully recognized for this age of the child's life. It
is that the physical body creates its own scale of measurement for what is
beneficial to it. This it does by the proper development of craving and
desire. Generally speaking, we may say that the healthy physical body desires
what is good for it. In the growing human being, so long as it is the physical
body that is important, we should pay the closest attention to what the
healthy craving, desire and delight require. Pleasure and delight are the
forces which most rightly quicken and call forth the physical forms of the
organs.
In this matter it is all
too easy to do harm by failing to bring the child into a right relationship,
physically, with his environment. Especially may this happen in regard to his
instincts for food. The child may be overfed with things that completely make
him lose his healthy instinct for food, whereas by giving him the right
nourishment the instinct can be so preserved that he always wants what is
wholesome for him under the circumstances, even to a glass of water, and turns
just as surely from what would do him harm. Anthroposophical Science, when
called upon to build up an art of education, will be able to indicate all
these things in detail, even specifying particular forms of food and
nourishment. For Anthroposophy is realism, it is no grey theory; it is a thing
for life itself.
Thus the joy of the child,
in and with his environment, must be reckoned among the forces that build and
mould the physical organs. Teachers he needs with happy look and manner, and
above all with an honest unaffected love. A love which as it were streams
through the physical environment of the child with warmth may literally be
said to ?hatch out? the forms of the physical organs.
The child who lives in
such an atmosphere of love and warmth and who has around him really good
examples for his imitation, is living in his right element. One should
therefore strictly guard against anything being done in the child's presence
that he must not imitate. One should do nothing of which one would then have
to say to the child, ?You must not do that.? The strength of the child's
tendency to imitate can be recognized by observing how he will paint and
scribble written signs and letters long before he understands them. Indeed, it
is good for him to paint the letters by imitation first, and only later learn
to understand their meaning. For imitation belongs to this period when the
physical body is developing; while the meaning speaks to the etheric, and the
etheric body should not be worked on till after the change of teeth, when the
outer etheric envelope has fallen away. Especially should all learning of
speech in these years be through imitation. It is by hearing that the child
will best learn to speak. No rules or artificial instruction of any kind can
be of good effect.
For early childhood it is
important to realize the value of children's songs, for example, as means of
education. They must make a pretty and rhythmical impression on the senses;
the beauty of sound is to be valued more than the meaning. The more living the
impression made on eye and ear, the better. Dancing movements in musical
rhythm have a powerful influence in building up the physical organs, and this
too should not be undervalued.
WITH the change of teeth,
when the etheric body lays aside its outer etheric envelope, there begins the
time when the etheric body can be worked upon by education from without. We
must be quite clear what it is that can work upon the etheric body from
without, The formation and growth of the etheric body means the moulding and
developing of the inclinations and habits, of the conscience, the character,
the memory and temperament. The etheric body is worked upon through pictures
and examples ? i.e. by carefully guiding the imagination of the child. As
before the age of seven we have to give the child the actual physical pattern
for him to copy, so between the time of the change of teeth and puberty we
must bring into his environment things with the right inner meaning and value.
For it is from the inner meaning and value of things that the growing child
will now take guidance. Whatever is fraught with a deep meaning that works
through pictures and allegories, is the right thing for these years. The
etheric body will unfold its forces if the well-ordered imagination is allowed
to take guidance from the inner meaning it discovers for itself in pictures
and allegories ? whether seen in real life or communicated to the mind. It is
not abstract conceptions that work in the right way on the growing etheric
body, but rather what is seen and perceived ? not indeed with the outward
senses, but with the eye of the mind. This seeing and perceiving is the right
means of education for these years.
For this reason it matters
above all that the boy and girl should have as their teachers persons who can
awaken in them, as they see and watch them, the right intellectual and moral
powers. As for the first years of childhood Imitation and Example were, so to
say, the magic words for education, so for the years of this second period the
magic words are Discipleship and Authority. What the child sees directly in
his educators, with inner perception, must become for him authority ? not an
authority compelled by force, but one that he accepts naturally without
question. By it he will build up his conscience, habits and inclinations; by
it he will bring his temperament into an ordered path. He will look out upon
the things of the world as it were through its eyes. Those beautiful words of
the poet, ?Every man must choose his hero, in whose footsteps he will tread as
he carves out his path to the heights of Olympus,? have especial meaning for
this time of life. Veneration and reverence are forces whereby the etheric
body grows in the right way. If it was impossible during these years to look
up to another person with unbounded reverence, one will have to suffer for the
loss throughout the whole of one's later life. Where reverence is lacking, the
living forces of the etheric body are stunted in their growth.
Picture to yourself how
such an incident as the following works upon the character of a child. A boy
of eight years old hears tell of someone who is truly worthy of honour and
respect. All that he hears of him inspires in the boy a holy awe. The day
draws near when for the first time he will be able to see him. With trembling
hand he lifts the latch of the door behind which will appear before his sight
the person he reveres. The beautiful feelings such an experience calls forth
are among the lasting treasures of life. Happy is he who, not only in the
solemn moments of life but continually, is able to look up to his teachers and
educators as to his natural and unquestioned authorities.
Beside these living
authorities, who as it were embody for the child intellectual and moral
strength, there should also be those he can only apprehend with the mind and
spirit, who likewise become for him authorities. The outstanding figures of
history, stories of the lives of great men and women: let these determine the
conscience and the direction of the mind. Abstract moral maxims are not yet to
be used; they can only begin to have a helpful influence, when at the age of
puberty the astral body liberates itself from its astral mother-envelope.
In the history lesson
especially, the teacher should lead his teaching in the direction thus
indicated. When telling stories of all kinds to little children before the
change of teeth, our aim cannot be more than to awaken delight and vivacity
and a happy enjoyment of the story. But after the change of teeth, we have in
addition something else to bear in mind in choosing our material for stories;
and that is, that we are placing before the boy or girl pictures of life that
will arouse a spirit of emulation in the soul.
The fact should not be
overlooked that bad habits may be completely overcome by drawing attention to
appropriate instances that shock or repel the child. Reprimands give at best
but little help in the matter of habits and inclinations. If, however, we show
the living picture of a man who has given way to a similar bad habit, and let
the child see where such an inclination actually leads, this will work upon
the young imagination and go a long way towards the uprooting of the habit.
The fact must always be remembered: it is not abstract ideas that have an
influence on the developing etheric body, but living pictures that are seen
and comprehended inwardly. The suggestion that has just been made certainly
needs to be carried out with great tact, so that the effect may not be
reversed and turn out the very opposite of what was intended. In the telling
of stories everything depends upon the art of telling. Narration by word of
mouth cannot, therefore, simply be replaced by reading.
In another connection too,
the presentation of living pictures, or as we might say of symbols, to the
mind, is important for the period between the change of teeth and puberty. It
is essential that the secrets of Nature, the laws of life, be taught to the
boy or girl, not in dry intellectual concepts, but as far as possible in
symbols. Parables of the spiritual connections of things should be brought
before the soul of the child in such a manner that behind the parables he
divines and feels, rather than grasps intellectually, the underlying law in
all existence. ?All that is passing is but a parable,? must be the maxim
guiding all our education in this period. It is of vast importance for the
child that he should receive the secrets of Nature in parables, before they
are brought before his soul in the form of ?natural laws? and the like. An
example may serve to make this clear. Let us imagine that we want to tell a
child of the immortality of the soul, of the coming forth of the soul from the
body. The way to do this is to use a comparison, such for example as the
comparison of the butterfly coming forth from the chrysalis. As the butterfly
soars up from the chrysalis, so after death the soul of man from the house of
the body. No man will rightly grasp the fact in intellectual concepts, who has
not first received it in such a picture. By such a parable, we speak not
merely to the intellect but to the feeling of the child, to all his soul. A
child who has experienced this, will approach the subject with an altogether
different mood of soul, when later it is taught him in the form of
intellectual concepts. It is indeed a very serious matter for any man, if he
was not first enabled to approach the problems of existence with his feeling.
Thus it is essential that the educator have at his disposal parables for all
the laws of Nature and secrets of the World.
Here we have an excellent
opportunity to observe with what effect the spiritual knowledge of
Anthroposophy must work in life and practice. When the teacher comes before a
class of children, armed with parables he has ?made up? out of an intellectual
materialistic mode of thought, he will as a rule make little impression upon
them. For he has first to puzzle out the parables for himself with all his
intellectual cleverness. Parables to which one has first had to condescend
have no convincing effect on those who listen to them. For when one speaks in
parable and picture, it is not only what is spoken and shown that works upon
the hearer, but a fine spiritual stream passes from the one to the other, from
him who gives to him who receives. If he who tells has not himself the warm
feeling of belief in his parable, he will make no impression on the other. For
real effectiveness, it is essential to believe in one's parables as in
absolute realities. And this can only be when one's thought is alive with
spiritual knowledge. Take for instance the parable of which we have been
speaking. The true student of Anthroposophy need not torment himself to think
it out. For him it is reality. In the coming forth of the butterfly from the
chrysalis he sees at work on a lower level of being the very same process that
is repeated, on a higher level and at a higher stage of development, in the
coming forth of the soul from the body. He believes in it with his whole
might; and this belief streams as it were unseen from speaker to hearer,
carrying conviction. Life flows freely, unhindered, back and forth from
teacher to pupil. But for this it is necessary that the teacher draw from the
full fountain of spiritual knowledge. His words and all that comes from him
must receive feeling, warmth and colour from a truly anthroposophic way of
thought.
A wonderful prospect is
thus opened out over the whole field of education. If it will but let itself
be enriched from the well of life that Anthroposophy contains, education will
itself be filled with life and understanding. There will no longer be that
groping which is now so prevalent. All art and practice of education that is
not continually receiving fresh nourishment from such roots as these is dry
and dead. The spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy has for all the secrets of
the world appropriate parables ? pictures taken from the very being of the
things, pictures not first made by man, but laid by the forces of the world
within the things themselves in the very act of their creation. Therefore this
spiritual knowledge must form the living basis for the whole art of education.
A force of the soul on
which particular value must be set during this period of man's development, is
memory. The development of the memory is bound up with the moulding of the
etheric body. Since the latter takes place in such a way that the etheric body
becomes liberated between the change of teeth and puberty, so too this is the
tune for a conscious attention from without to the growth and cultivation of
the memory. If what is due to the human being at this time has been neglected,
his memory will ever after have less value than it might otherwise have had.
It is not possible later to make up for what has been left undone.
In this connection many
mistakes may be made by an intellectual materialistic way of thought. An art
of education based on such a way of thought easily arrives at a condemnation
of what is mastered merely by memory. It will often set itself untiringly and
emphatically against the mere training of the memory, and will employ the
subtlest methods to ensure that the boy or girl commits nothing to memory that
he does not intellectually understand. Yes, and after all, how much has really
been gained by such intellectual understanding? A materialistic way of thought
is so easily led to believe that any further penetration into things, beyond
the intellectual concepts that are as it were extracted from them, simply does
not exist; and only with great difficulty will it fight its way through to the
perception that the other forces of the soul are at least as necessary as the
intellect, if we are to gain a comprehension of things. It is no mere figure
of speech to say that man can understand with his feeling, his sentiment, his
inner disposition, as well as with his intellect. Intellectual concepts are
only one of the means we have to understand the things of this world, and it
is only to the materialistic thinker that they appear as the sole means. Of
course there are many who do not consider themselves materialists, who yet
regard an intellectual conception of things as the only kind of understanding.
Such people profess perhaps an idealistic or even a spiritual outlook. But in
their soul they relate themselves to it in a materialistic way. For the
intellect is in effect the instrument of the soul for understanding what is
material.
We have already alluded to
Jean Paul's excellent book on education; and a passage from it, bearing on
this subject of the deeper foundations of the understanding, may well be
quoted here. Jean Paul's book contains, indeed, many a golden word on
education, and deserves far more attention than it receives. It is of greater
value for the teacher than many of the educational works that are held in
highest regard to-day. The passage runs as follows: ?
?Have no fear of going
beyond the childish understanding, even in whole sentences. Your expression
and the tone of your voice, aided by the child's intuitive eagerness to
understand, will light up half the meaning, and with it in course of time the
other half. It is with children as with the Chinese and people of refinement;
the tone is half the language. Remember, the child learns to understand his
own language before ever he learns to speak it, just as we do with Greek or
any other foreign language. Trust to time and the connections of things to
unravel the meaning. A child of five understands the words ?yet,? ?even,? ?of
course,? ?just?; but now try to give an explanation of them ? not to the
child, but to his father! In the one word ?of course? there lurks a little
philosopher! If the eight-year-old child, with his developed speech, is
understood by the child of three, why do you want to narrow down your language
to the little one's childish prattle? Always speak to the child some years
ahead ? do not the men of genius speak to us centuries ahead in books? Talk to
the one-year-old as if he were two, to the two-year-old as if he were six, for
the difference in development diminishes in inverse ratio with the age. We are
far too prone to credit the teachers with everything the children learn. We
should remember that the child we have to educate bears half his world within
him all there and ready taught, namely the spiritual half, including, for
example, the moral and metaphysical ideas. For this very reason language,
equipped as it is with material images alone, cannot give the spiritual
archetypes; all it can do is to illumine them. The very brightness and
decision of children should give us brightness and decision when we speak to
them. We can learn from their speech as well as teach them through our own.
Their word-building is bold, yet remarkably accurate! For instance, I have
heard the following expressions used by three- or four-year-old children: ?
?the barreler? (for the maker of barrels) ? ?the sky-mouse? (for the bat) ? ?I
am the seeing-through man? (standing behind the telescope) ? ?I'd like to be a
ginger-bread-eater? ? ?he joked me down from the chair? ? ?See how one o'clock
it is!? ...?
Our quotation refers, it
is true, to a different subject from that with which we are immediately
concerned; but what Jean Paul says about speech has its value in the present
connection also. Here too there is an understanding which precedes the
intellectual comprehension. The little child receives the structure of
language into the living organism of his soul, and does not require the laws
of language-formation in intellectual concepts for the process. Similarly the
older boy and girl must learn for the cultivation of the memory much that they
are not to master with their intellectual understanding until later years.
Those things are afterwards best grasped in concepts, which have first been
learned simply from memory in this period of life, even as the rules of
language are best learned in a language one is already able to speak. So much
talk against ?unintelligent learning by heart? is simply materialistic
prejudice. The child need only, for instance, learn the essential rules of
multiplication in a few given examples ? and for these no apparatus is
necessary; the fingers are much better for the purpose than any apparatus, ?
then he is ready to set to and memorize the whole multiplication table.
Proceeding in this way, we shall be acting with due regard to the nature of
the growing child. We shall, however, be offending against his nature, if at
the time when the development of the memory is the important thing we are
making too great a call upon the intellect.
The intellect is a
soul-force that is only born with puberty, and we ought not to bring any
influence to bear on it from outside before this period. Up to the time of
puberty the child should be laying up in his memory the treasures of thought
on which mankind has pondered; afterwards is the time to penetrate with
intellectual understanding what has already been well impressed upon the
memory in earlier years. It is necessary for man, not only to remember what he
already understands, but to come to understand what he already knows ? that is
to say, what he has acquired by memory in the way the child acquires language.
This truth has a wide application. First there must be the assimilation of
historical events through the memory, then the grasping of them in
intellectual concepts;
first the faithful
committing to memory of the facts of geography, then the intellectual grasp of
the connections between them. In a certain respect, the grasping of things in
concepts should proceed from the stored-up treasures of the memory. The more
the child knows in memory before he begins to grasp in intellectual concepts,
the better.
There is no need to
enlarge upon the fact that what has been said applies only for that period of
childhood with which we are dealing, and not later. If at some later age in
life one has occasion to take up a subject for any reason, then of course the
opposite may easily be the right and most helpful way of learning it, though
even here much will depend on the mentality of the person. In the time d life,
however, with which we are now concerned, we must not dry up the child's mind
and spirit by cramming it with intellectual conceptions.
Another result of a
materialistic way of thought is to be seen in the lessons that rest too
exclusively on sense-perception. At this period of childhood, all perception
must be spiritualized. We ought not to be satisfied, for instance, with
presenting a plant, a seed, a flower to the child merely as it can be
perceived with the senses. Everything should become a parable of the
spiritual. In a grain of corn there is far more than meets the eye. There is a
whole new plant invisible within it. That such a thing as a seed has more
within it than can be perceived with the senses, this the child must grasp in
a living way with his feeling and imagination. He must, in feeling, divine the
secrets of existence. The objection cannot be made that the pure perception of
the senses is obscured by this means; on the contrary, by going no further
than what the senses see, we are stopping short of the whole truth. For the
full reality consists of the spirit as well as the substance; and there is no
less need for faithful and careful observation when one is bringing all the
faculties of the soul into play, than when only the physical senses are
employed. Could men but see, as the spiritual investigator sees, what
desolation is wrought in soul and body by an instruction that rests on
external sense-perception alone, they would never insist upon it so strongly
as they do. Of what good is it in the highest sense, that children should have
shown to them all possible varieties of minerals, plants and animals, and all
kinds of physical experiments, if something further is not bound up with the
teaching of these things; namely, to make use of the parables which the
sense-world gives, in order to awaken a feeling for the secrets of the spirit?
Certainly a materialistic
way of thought will have little use for what has here been said; and this the
spiritual investigator understands only too well. But |
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